http://cache.jezebel.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/jezebel.com.png http://jezebel.com/tag/eugenics http://jezebel.com/tag/eugenics

A task force convened by North Carolina governor Beverly Perdue has spent months debating what the state should do for the 1,500-2,000 living victims of its forced sterilization program, which targeted poor, black, and disabled residents all the way up into the seventies. Now, the task force has recommended that each victim (one is Elaine Riddick, pictured above) should receive $50,000 in reparations payments, as well as counseling services. The state legislature still has to approve the proposal, and it's not all that victims' advocates have asked for — one proposal called for payments of $1 million. Still, Dr. Laura Gerald, chair of the task force, says the proposal sends the message that "We in North Carolina are people who pay for our mistakes." More »
]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5875273&view=rss&microfeed=true

From the 1920's to the late 1970's, the state of North Carolina forcibly sterilized 7,600 people. Most of them were poor women, and a disproportionate number of them were black. At the time, the government justified the surgeries as in the best interest of the state, as those sterilized were classified as "feeble minded" or "promiscuous," but now the state's changed its tune and is trying to compensate victims of the program and put that whole ugliness behind it. I hope the restitution payments at least come with a "Sorry I Forcibly Chopped Up Your Fallopian Tubes And Called You A Slut" gift basket. More »
]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5857121&view=rss&microfeed=true

In 1968, Elaine Riddick was sterilized against her will after a c-section to deliver her first and only child. She was just fourteen years old. Now she's fighting to receive compensation as a victim of North Carolina's Eugenics Board, which sterilized thousands of women, disproportionately black, on such grounds as "feeblemindedness." More »
]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5830940&view=rss&microfeed=true

Rick Santorum recently said he found it "almost remarkable for a black man" to be pro-choice. The anti-choice linking of abortion, slavery, and genocide has always involved a cocktail of distortion and condescension. So what to do about it? More »
]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5747880&view=rss&microfeed=true

That's during marital intimacy. Oh, and the fun doesn't stop there! We haven't even started on the "social class differences" you should be aware of When You Marry. [Contexts] More »
]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5386975&view=rss&microfeed=true

Via Feminist Law Professors, Academics at NYU have been working on an archive of the work of Margaret Sanger, the early 20th century birth control advocate, and responding to New Jersey Republican Congressman Christopher Smith's misrepresentations of her work. More »
]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5345152&view=rss&microfeed=true

As part of her Times interview, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made some brief remarks about the Hyde Amendment and whether criticisms of the reproductive rights movement's flirtation with economic eugenics would prove true. Those have, naturally, been misinterpreted. More »
]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5311192&view=rss&microfeed=true

With Trig Palin being perhaps the best known special-needs child in American history, there have been several articles about increased genetic testing for prenatal abnormalities in recent days. As the story goes, Sarah Palin knew before he was born that Trig had a genetic condition, but because of her strongly held anti-abortion beliefs, did not consider abortion as an option. The Wall Street Journal profiles Jennifer Carden, a Michigan mother who made a similar choice, and had her son Parker in 2007. More »
]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5069132&view=rss&microfeed=true

Louisiana Representative John Labruzzo is a unique problem solver. Recognizing that generational poverty is a problem for many people in his state, he's dispensed with the usual solutions of education, training, access to reduced- or low-cost family planning or any normal poverty-reduction programs in favor of paying poor people to get sterilized. What? It could significantly eliminate generational poverty by eliminating generations! Anyway, when he was called upon to defend his shitty idea, he blamed it all on the media blowing it up for ratings' sake, even as he successfully danced around blaming it all on black people. I dunno, I can think of one person who probably ought to refrain from breeding. He's named "John LaBruzzo." [Think Progress, Feministing] More »
]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5055341&view=rss&microfeed=true

Hey, remember how double helix discoverer and nasty old Nobel laureate James Watson thinks black people are stupid and all homos and ugly women deserve to be aborted? Well, now he says he doesn't actually believe all of that. "To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief," is his new line. Which is not to say that he doesn't think scientists should look for one, according to today's "What I've Learned" feature on the Esquire website, which can be summarized thusly: "The world would be so much better if everyone just had my DNA, or alternately, that of the Ashkenazi Jews, who are so much smarter than everyone else it is only natural and warranted that people hate them, because they have all the money, and we should probably pay them even more money since they are greedy and that is how you motivate these people, to have more children." More »
]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=312933&view=rss&microfeed=true