State to Send Out About 200 Eugenics Payments
By Meghann Evans,
Winston-Salem Journal
| 10. 01. 2014
Elaine Riddick got a call this week that had been more than 40 years in the making.
Riddick, a victim of North Carolina’s eugenics program, said she received word from the state that they would send her a eugenics compensation payment at the end of the month.
“I have been fighting this for over 40 years,” said Riddick, who is now 60 years old.
From 1929 to 1974, the state sterilized about 7,600 people, many against their will.
Last year North Carolina set aside $10 million to be divided equally among victims of the N.C. Eugenics Board program. Victims had until June 30 to submit a claim form.
The first eugenics compensation payments are to be sent out by Oct. 31, and a second payment will be sent to victims next year.
So far about 213 victims have qualified for compensation, according to the Office of Justice for Sterilization Victims.
The foundation preceding that office had identified 176 living victims as of early 2013, but the state received 786 claim forms.
Chris Mears, a spokesman for the Office of Justice...
Related Articles
By David Jensen, California Stem Cell Report | 02.10.2026
Touchy issues involving accusations that California’s $12 billion gene and stem cell research agency is pushing aside “good science” in favor of new priorities and preferences will be aired again in late March at a public meeting in Sacramento.
The...
By Evelina Johansson Wilén, Jacobin | 01.18.2026
In her book The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson describes pregnancy as an experience marked by a peculiar duality. On the one hand, it is deeply transformative, bodily alien, sometimes almost incomprehensible to the person undergoing it. On the other hand...
By Daphne O. Martschenko and Julia E. H. Brown, Hastings Bioethics Forum | 01.14.2026
There is growing concern that falling fertility rates will lead to economic and demographic catastrophe. The social and political movement known as pronatalism looks to combat depopulation by encouraging people to have as many children as possible. But not just...
By Katherine Long, The Wall Street Journal | 12.27.2025
Nia Trent-Wilson owes $182,889.63 in medical bills for a baby that wasn’t hers.
In late 2021, she agreed to act as a surrogate through an agency that paired her with a gay couple from Washington, D.C. The terms were typical...
