courtesy of Miroslava Chavez-Garcia and from The Modesto Bee:
Published: July 7, 2013 Updated 8 hours ago
http://www.modbee.com/2013/07/07/2796548/female-inmates-sterilized-in-california.html
Douglas Wahlsten has emailed to inform us of a publication in the Winston-Salem Journal on the story of Leilani Muir: the court battle (and victory) over wrongful sterilization, compensation, and the numerous cases that followed. Wahlsten explores these as a potential model to be used in cases of sterilization compensation in the United States, while also noting the recent promotion of the Canadian Eugenics’ past with the CURA funded Living Archives Project and the NFB documentary on the Leilani Muir case.
The award for sterilization followed existing rules in Alberta about an upper limit of damages for loss of the ability to have children from injury. Other jurisdictions may have another limit or even no limit at all. Consider the recent case of Evans vs Lorillard, where a man was awarded $152 million because the tobacco giant gave cigarettes to his mother when she was a child, and she became addicted and eventually died of lung cancer.
What would be the award if a woman lost her ability to have children because of a mistake during surgery or an auto accident? It seems this would be a reasonable standard for an award to victims of eugenic sterilization. To give them less implies they do not deserve the same respect as other people. Surely the amount should exceed the $20,000 proposed for victims of eugenics in North Carolina, because having children is a precious thing.
You can find the article here.
A book by Jane Harris-Zsovan will be launch on Wednesday November 17th 1:30 – 3:30
It’s a dirty little secret the heirs to Alberta’s populist legacy don’t want Canadians to talk about. In 1928, the non-partisan United Farmers of Alberta passed the first Sexual Sterilization Act. The UFA’s successor, the Social Credit Party, led by radio evangelist WilliamAberhart, and later by his protégé Ernest Manning, removed the need to obtain consent to sterilize “mental defectives” or Huntington’s Chorea patients with dementia.
from CBC Edmonton, last night, with stacks of comments already.
CBC News – Edmonton – Alberta’s sex sterilizations re-examined.
h/t to Medical Humanities blog
full post at The Carolina Curator
In North Carolina over 7,600 people were sterilized between 1929 and 1974 under the state’s Eugenics Sterilization Program. Indiana was the first state to implement such a program, and eventually over 30 states followed suit, including North Carolina in 1929. The Eugenics Board of North Carolina reviewed petitions for sterilizations and authorized sterilizations in over 90% of cases. Of those sterilized, approximately 38% were black and 84% were female; moreover, 71% were classified as “feebleminded.” While most states’ sterilization programs diminished in scope after World War II, almost 80% of North Carolina’s cases occurred after 1945. By the late 1960’s over 60% of those sterilized in North Carolina were black and 99% were female.
North Carolina Governor Michael Easley established a committee to investigate the state’s Eugenics Sterilization Program, and currently the General Assembly of North Carolina is considering two bills: House Bill 21, Eugenics Program – Support and Education and Senate Bill 179, Sterilization Compensation
full post at The Carolina Curator
On October 25, 2008, the What Sorts Network hosted a public symposium to examine, well, philosophy, eugenics, and disability in Alberta and places north. Four speakers were featured on the panel, Dick Sobsey, Simo Vehmas, Martin Tweedale, and Rob Wilson. This event was video recorded and over the next month we will highlight these videos on this blog. Roughly four videos will be featured each week.
To download the full description of the symposium please click here.
With this video we begin the second part of the presentation by Simo Vehmas (The first part may be found here). Simo’s presentation is titled “Preventing Disability: Nordic Perspectives” and it focuses on summarizing past and present attitudes towards eugenic practices in Nordic countries, principally Finland, with special attention paid to attitudes and ideas around eugenic practices of preventing disability.
Highlights: Lack of knowledge by sterilization victims about what was happening, total number of Finnish sterilization victims in, illusion of voluntary sterilization, logical flaw of “playing the Nazi card”, strategy for effective discussion in the face of embarrassment, and prevention of disability vs. providing autonomous choice.
A transcript follows the cut. Continue reading
On October 25, 2008, the What Sorts Network hosted a public symposium to examine, well, philosophy, eugenics, and disability in Alberta and places north. Four speakers were featured on the panel, Dick Sobsey, Simo Vehmas, Martin Tweedale, and Rob Wilson. This event was video recorded and over the next month we will highlight these videos on this blog. Roughly four videos will be featured each week.
To download the full description of the symposium please click here.
With this video we begin the presentation by Simo Vehmas. Simo’s presentation is titled “Preventing Disability: Nordic Perspectives” and it focuses on summarizing past and present attitudes towards eugenic practices in Nordic countries, principally Finland, with special attention paid to attitudes and ideas around eugenic practices of preventing disability.
Highlights: Origins of eugenic ideas in Finland; use of eugenic practices to reinforce various social power structures; ineffectiveness of marriage regulations lead to sterilization practices; intersection of eugenics, morality and criminality.
A transcript follows the cut.
On October 25, 2008, the What Sorts Network hosted a public symposium to examine, well, philosophy, eugenics, and disability in Alberta and places north. Four speakers were featured on the panel, Dick Sobsey, Simo Vehmas, Martin Tweedale, and Rob Wilson. This event was video recorded and over the next month we will highlight these videos on this blog. Videos will be featured on average twice a week, roughly every Saturday and Wednesday.
To download the full description of the symposium please click here.
We began this series with the first two parts of the presentation by Dick Sobsey, titled “Varieties of Eugenics Experience in the 21st Century.” This presentation amounts to a summary of various kinds of eugenic motivations, justifications, and practices from the 19th century to today with a good collection of anecdotes and trivia. Parts 3 and 4 are highlighted in the videos below. Transcripts are also posted below.
Highlights from part 3 include: criticism of Jukes as an assault upon the poor, best cement in the world, origin of the underground records for all the new york banks, continuing the Juke heritage, Dugdale’s findings, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. on Sterilization, measures of intelligence and the Flynn Effect, and stopping people from having children easiest through institutionalization.
Some of you may know this already, so apologies for cross-posting. Liz Crow, a British filmmaker, has been engaged in putting together a commemorative and interactive installation chronicling Aktion Tiergartenstrasse 4, an extermination plan enacted in 1939 by the Nazi’s with the goal of eliminating people with disabilities from a society that sought Aryan perfection. Aktion T4 became the ‘successful’ blueprint for extermination camps with a broader mandate as the war progressed. In this clip–which is captioned in English, with spoken English as well–Liz Crow outlines the project and the film she’s working on.
You can also see more at the Roaring Girl Productions website, including a 3-D tour of what the installation will look like.
From the Associated Press, courtesy of DAWG Oregon; it looks like the reference (below the fold) to Illinois as the first state to enact sterilization should be to Indiana, though if I’m misreading this (or am just wrong), let us know! Note that the dates for eugenic sterilization in NC were 1929-1975, almost the same as for Alberta, 1929-1975. *****
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina lawmakers pushed Thursday to offer reparations to thousands of victims of a forced sterilization program now recognized as a shameful part of U.S. history.
A state House panel recommended the state give $20,000 to victims of the eugenics program, which sterilized about 7,600 people between 1929 and 1975 who were considered to be mentally handicapped or genetically inferior. Though North Carolina and several other states have apologized, none had offered reparations.
“Yes, it is ugly. It’s not something that we’re proud,” said state Rep. Larry Womble, D-Forsyth, who has been working on the issue for several years. “But I’m glad that North Carolina has done more than any other state to step forward and not run away from it.” Lawmakers in the full General Assembly will have to approve the idea. They convene next month. Continue reading
Get more details on the day beneath the fold.
Tomorrow's Children
Tomorrow’s Children is a 1934 drama that intends to make a bold statements about everything that is wrong with forced sterilization.
Thanks to the magic of YouTube and the passage of time this film is both available for viewing and in the public domain. Continue reading
Just a reminder to anyone who wants to vote in the Mavericks competition that the Vocational and Rehabilitation Research Institute in Calgary is running to GET TO IT FOLKS. On the roster (Maverick #6) is our very own Leilani Muir (pictured here, some time earlier than yesterday), who blazed a maverick path by taking the Province of Alberta to court in 1995-96 for her wrongful eugenic sterilization under the Sexual Sterilization Act of Alberta. The decision in Leilani’s case paved the way for a large number of further settlements for other plaintiffs, and more than a blip of public awareness about this aspect of Alberta’s history. You can vote for three candidates in different categories (education, deinstitutionalization, and community living), and voting for Leilani is a small step to having the courage and determination behind her efforts recognized more publicly, Continue reading
Living Archives on Eugenics Blog 
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