RALEIGH

The N.C. Senate unanimously agreed yesterday to remove one of the last remnants of a state eugenics program that sterilized more than 7,600 people from 1929 through 1974 - often against their will.

The Senate voted on a bill that the House overwhelmingly approved last week, one that would remove a law allowing the involuntary sterilization of the mentally ill.

"Obviously, I was thrilled and feel very grateful that both chambers understood the enormity of this situation and acted quickly and responsibly," said Carmen Hooker Odom. She is the chairwoman of a committee appointed by Gov. Mike Easley to consider reparations and other forms of help for those ordered sterilized by the Eugenics Board of North Carolina.

Hooker Odom, the secretary of the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, said that the Senate action clears the way for the committee's final work: helping those sterilized by the program. The eugenics board has come under increased scrutiny since a series of stories in December in the Winston-Salem Journal.

Easley formally apologized for the program on the last day of the series then appointed the study committee, the first of its kind in the nation. Easley is expected to sign the bill approved into law soon, Hooker Odom said.

The law to be stricken allows sterilization in cases of a person's "mental, moral or physical improvement," or for the "public good." It took effect in 1975 after legislators dissolved the eugenics board, which was driven by aggressive social workers and often relied on flawed IQ tests. The program - based on the eugenics movement's claims that sterilization could eradicate mental illness, genetic defects and social ills - operated with little oversight.

"Bureaucracies sometimes get these lives of their own and just keep on going, even if people don't realize they're still in existence," Hooker Odom said.

Sen. Jeanne Lucas, D-Dur-ham, who spoke for the bill, pointed to emotional testimony before legislative and the governor's committees recently from two women who had been sterilized against their will in the 1960s in northeastern North Carolina. The women, Nial Cox Ramirez and Elaine Riddick Jessie, both live in the Atlanta area now.

"These women have been able to carry on their lives in spite of what happened to them. And their children - their first set of children - have led productive lives," Lucas said.

Rep. Larry Womble D-For-syth, the bill's principal sponsor, said he hopes that Easley will have a ceremony to sign it and invite the women to attend.

Once the eugenics board was disbanded, legislators shifted the responsibility for ruling on sterilization petitions to the judicial system. The new bill still allows for involuntary sterilizations in certain narrow circumstances, including if a mentally disabled woman needs a hysterectomy to remove fibroid tumors or treat ovarian cancer.

After the vote, Sen. Ellie Kinnaird, D-Orange, said that North Carolina's long experiment with eugenics showed that science can indeed be mistaken.

"Society sometimes can be very, very wrong. And we look sometimes on the despised of society as something we can do whatever we want with," Kinnaird said. "The lesson I hope we learn from this is that we treat everyone with respect."

Backers of the bill say that the next step is to push for reparations for victims.

The committee appointed by Easley is studying the issue. But given the state's current budget troubles, some aren't sure that the state can afford to pay victims.

"I've got that bill drafted, ready to go," Womble said. "It doesn't have to be money, either. It could be educational considerations. It could be health - some of these people are still suffering health effects." Lucas said that Easley's committee is studying the possibility of reparations. "Whether it can be done or not, I don't know. But it certainly needs to be looked into," she said.

Others fear legislative inaction, saying that reparation payments could raise another, more controversial issue.

"Lurking behind those reparations are the biggest reparations of all, for slavery," said Kinnaird. But she said that the United States has paid reparations to Japanese-Americans who were held in internment camps during World War II.

Hooker Odom said that considering compensation for those sterilized isn't "in the same discussion as full reparations around issues related to slavery." The difference, she said, is that the state eugenics program involved a limited number of victims sterilized by a single program, she said.

Her committee hasn't taken financial compensation for those sterilized out of consideration, she said, but it's also considering other options, such as health-care credits and education credits. The committee hopes to submit in June its recommendations to Easley about what should be done.

Easley wanted it to move in a timely fashion in helping those sterilized by order of the eugenics board, Hooker Odom said.

"I think he is appalled that it happened here in North Carolina," she said. "And as long as it happened in North Carolina, and the direction it took in North Carolina."

• David Rice can be reached in Raleigh at (919) 833-9056 or at drice@wsjournal.com • John Railey can be reached at 727-7288 or at jrailey @wsjournal.com

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