Jessie and Ramirez, who traveled from Atlanta to Raleigh to celebrate the occasion, were introduced as "brave and courageous ladies who stepped forward in order to get that bill passed." Joined by their families, the two women received a standing ovation from members of the N.C. House of Representatives and onlookers in a packed balcony at the Legislative Building.

"I want you to let them know that North Carolina is not that North Carolina that forced sterilized them years ago," Rep. Larry Womble, D-Forsyth, told his colleagues as he introduced them. "We are better than that today."

Womble led the legislative effort to repeal the involuntary sterilization law - the last legal link to the state's eugenics program that sterilized more than 7,600 people from 1929 to 1974, many of them against their will.

Gov. Mike Easley signed the bill into law at a private ceremony with Jessie and Ramirez, their families and several legislators, including Womble.

"It was a very joyful event to see that someone actually took the time and heard our cries ... took the time and paid attention," Jessie said. Her only son, Tony Riddick of Winfall, and her nephew, Curtis Riddick of Georgia, joined her.

"No one should ever feel the pain and agony of not being able to have children," Jessie said. "It's a God-given right: Be fruitful and multiply and fill the world with images of thyself. This is something they took away from us."

Jessie and Ramirez were sterilized by order of the Eugenics Board of North Carolina. The board operated with little oversight, justified sterilizations on flawed intelligence testing and often ignored the wishes of patients and their families.

Its work went largely unscrutinized until Johanna Schoen, a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, got access to previously sealed records from the eugenics board.

Easley apologized for the program after a series published in the Winston-Salem Journal revealed new details. He also created a special committee, the first of its kind in the country, to study whether victims should be compensated. The committee will meet again April 24 and could make recommendations by June.

The law that was struck allowed involuntary sterilizations "for the public good" or when officials thought it likely that the person would have a child with a physical or mental disease. It was a remnant of the law that authorized the eugenics board to order the operations on people it deemed mentally ill, diseased or feeble-minded.

Jessie was 14 when she was sterilized. The board determined that she was "feeble-minded" after she got pregnant by a man in his 20s, statutory rape by law. Ramirez was 18 and the mother of one when she was sterilized. She, too, was labeled "feeble-minded." She said her social worker threatened to cut her family from welfare if she didn't agree to the operation.

Both women have agonized about the sterilizations for years. They say they're happy that no one else will have to suffer the same feelings now that the law has been repealed -only medically necessary sterilizations can be performed now. But they say that the official bill signing signals a new beginning, not the end of a bad chapter.

"I wanted him (Easley) to say what else he was going to do for us. He didn't," said Ramirez, who was accompanied by her daughter, Deborah Chesson of Georgia.

Like Jessie, Ramirez says that victims of the eugenics program should be compensated with more than the pens Easley gave them after the signing.

"Signing of this bill is fine," Jessie said. "Thank you very much. But we lost something. It's like losing a limb. You can't use it anymore.... It ain't about gold-digging, it's the principle."

Tony Riddick said that his mother would never be the same. She sees a psychiatrist and takes Prozac as well as another drug to help her sleep.

"My mother's sick. I know why she's sick," he said. "Whenever I see her sick, I think of the wrong that was done to her.

"I think they should continue this process," Riddick said. "It shouldn't stop here."

Chesson, too, expressed hope for her mother's future, despite the renewed pain that comes with such events.

"I think it can be a beginning to healing," she said. "But if it was all just a show, then they're actually being victimized again."

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