California is searching for approximately 600 surviving people who the state sterilized without their permission in prison or during the eugenics movement, offering them reparations of at least $15,000 each by the end of the year, according to The Associated Press.
The $4.5 million state program’s application deadline is set for 2023’s end, with only 45 people approved for the reparations so far, the outlet reported. Three of the approved recipients were sterilized in the eugenics era, while the rest were sterilized in California prisons, and a state audit found 144 female inmates underwent sterilization between 2005 and 2013 with little or no evidence of counseling or alternative treatment offerings before the state prison sterilization for birth control the next year.
The eugenics movement reached its height in the 1930s, and survivors of that period are in their eighties or older, according to the AP. Sterilizing prisoners with federal funding has been prohibited under federal and California state law, Reveal reported.
“We try to find all the information we can and sometimes we just have to hope that somebody maybe can find more detailed information on their own,” California Victims’ Compensation Board Executive Office Lynda Gledhill told the outlet. “We’re just sometimes not able to verify what happened.”
www.wnd.com/2023/01/state-seeking-pay-reparations-nearly-600-forced-sterilization-survivors/