lbonner@newsobserver.com

The state House approved in an 86-31 vote Tuesday a measure that will compensate people sterilized by a state authority over four decades.

Under the bill, people verified by a state Office of Justice for Sterilization Victims and determined eligible by the Industrial Commission would each receive $50,000. House members voted to change eligibility, so that people alive as of May 16, 2012 would be eligible, rather than those alive in March 2010. The House defeated an amendment to reduce the compensation to $20,000.

We cannot solve all the problems of the past, said House Majority Leader Paul Stam, an Apex Republican. This is one we can ameliorate and solve.

The bill sets aside $10 million in a reserve fund to pay victims. The bill now moves to the Senate for consideration.

The state passed a eugenics law in 1929 and from 1933 to 1974, a board created by the legislature ordered that mentally diseased, feeble-minded or epileptic people be sterilized. The board also ordered sterilized people who were poor or who were thought likely to have disabled children.

Many states ran eugenics programs, but North Carolinas was one of the most active, enlisting social workers to make sterilization recommendations.

According to the N.C. Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation, most states moved away from sterilization after World War II, while 70 percent of the Eugenics Board-approved sterilizations in North Carolina occurred after World War II. The board authorized the sterilization of about 7,600 people. About 1,500 to 2,000 are thought to still be alive. The state has verified 118 living victims.

House Speaker Thom Tillis described the eugenics program as an egregious example of government taking away rights, something conservatives oppose.

This is a chance to make history, Tillis said.

Read more from the original source:

N.C. House approves measure compensating victims of eugenics programs