Sterilized by North Carolina, She Felt Raped Once More
By David Zucchino,
Los Angeles Times
| 01. 25. 2012
Reporting from Raleigh, N.C.— Elaine Riddick was a confused and frightened 14-year-old. She was poor and black, the daughter of alcoholic parents in a segregated North Carolina town. And she was pregnant after being raped by a man from her neighborhood.
Riddick's miserable circumstances attracted the attention of social workers, who referred her case to the state's Eugenics Board. In an office building in Raleigh, five men met to consider her fate — among them the state health director and a lawyer from the attorney general's office.
Board members concluded that the girl was "feebleminded" and doomed to "promiscuity." They recommended sterilization. Riddick's illiterate grandmother, Maggie Woodard, known as "Miss Peaches," marked an "X" on a consent form.
Hours after Riddick gave birth to a son in Edenton, N.C., on March 5, 1968, a doctor sliced through her fallopian tubes and cauterized them.
"They butchered me like a hog," recalls Riddick, now a poised and determined woman of 57.
Nearly 44 years later, the state of North Carolina has proposed paying $50,000 each to compensate Riddick and other victims of...
Related Articles
By Calder Mchugh, Politico | 05.15.2026
There will come a time, in the not-so-distant future, when you decide to stick a computer chip in your brain.
At least, that’s what D. Scott Phoenix told the audience at TED 2026 in Vancouver last month.
“Someone you work...
By Nanette Elster, Kayhan Parsi, and Art Caplan, The American Journal of Bioethics | 05.06.2026
“Better babies.” “Fitter families.” “Survival of the fittest.” “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” These phrases are not merely historical reminders of the United States’ regrettable eugenic past but are appearing in an increasingly eugenic present. Eugenics may have seemed...
By Rob Stein, NPR [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 05.06.2026
Justin Schleede reaches onto a black lab bench to pick up a tray of small plastic tubes.
"These are saliva samples as well as blood," says Schleede, a geneticist who runs Herasight Inc.'s lab in Morrisville, N.C. "We also...
By Rob Stein, NPR | 04.23.2026
The Food and Drug Administration approved the first gene therapy to restore hearing for people who were born deaf.
The decision, while only immediately affecting people born with a very rare form of genetic deafness, is being hailed as...
