Doctors across the state quietly carried out the orders of the Eugenics Board of North Carolina through the Great Depression, World War II and the boom years that followed.

But in the face of professional criticism, some surgeons stopped performing the sterilizations on girls and women in the 1960s. "Most physicians who were involved in it began to say it wasn't worth it," said Dr. A.V. Blount, 80, of Greensboro. "They were being largely criticized by their colleagues."

Blount said that he assisted in sterilization operations and may have done one himself, although he can't remember. Either way, he said, he always had reservations about the operations. "To do this to the mentally ill, sterilizing them is a little bit harsh," said Blount, who is still practicing medicine part time. "I had a feeling that ... perhaps this wasn't a good thing to do."

Dr. Robert Albanese, a family-practice doctor who helped arrange a sterilization in Dare County in 1967, said he now has reservations about doing so. The eugenics program "seemed like a good idea," he said, "but then again to do a surgical procedure on somebody who doesn't really want it, that's not right, either."

Most of the doctors who did the sterilizations are dead, and few of the surviving doctors will talk publicly about the issue, saying that it is still too sensitive.

But one doctor who performed the operations said he felt that he was helping society. "I never did any that I didn't evaluate and think that they were incompetent of having a child," said Dr. Ernest Brown, 71, of Lumberton.

Other doctors who declined to comment for this story minimized their roles, saying that they only carried out state orders. As eugenics board members and their supporters pushed the program, it was usually social workers - not doctors - who took the initiative in sterilization cases.

"With a few exceptions, the evidence at our disposal suggests that doctors do not interest themselves in the possibility, and rarely trouble to bring cases of feeble-mindedness among their patients to the attention of the Eugenics Board," wrote researcher Moya Woodside in Sterilization in North Carolina, a book published in 1950. She wrote that "medical indifference towards sterilization was mentioned not only by social workers but by doctors in the public-health service who criticized their colleagues as lacking in social-mindedness."

Brown said that mothers of his patients would often ask the state to order the operations. He didn't do more than 12 of the operations, he said, and all of them were during the 1960s.

"Most of them (the patients) were in their late teens up into the 30s. These children didn't know what they were going through, they would provoke unscrupulous men, if you know what I mean," Brown said.

The patients, of low intelligence, never voiced objections, he said. "I don't think the patients ever understood what was happening."

The eugenics program was the best thing the state could come up with at the time, he said. But he added that "we haven't lost anything by not having the state do it."

Blount said that the organizers of the eugenics program had good intentions. "I think honestly, the people who were involved in it thought they were helping."

• John Railey can be reached at 727-7288 or at jrailey@wsjournal.com