Will Utah Compensate Victims of Forced Sterilization?
Of the 32 US states that forcibly sterilized people in the 20th century under the influence of eugenics, only three have taken accountability by compensating survivors. A group of researchers is trying to make Utah the next.
Earnest Lewis Reynolds, a victim of the Virginia state-sanctioned program aimed at sterilizing “mental defectives,” at his home on January 30, 2012, in Lynchburg, Virginia. (Jahi Chikwendiu / the Washington Post via Getty Images)
In 2018, Dr James Tabery watched a documentary about North Carolina’s eugenics program and the fraught effort to financially compensate survivors. The film changed his life.
“Seeing The State of Eugenics . . . everything crystallized for me,” said Tabery, a professor at the University of Utah’s Philosophy Department. “It was like this isn’t history or it’s not just history. These people are out there.”
In fact, as many as forty-eight people may still be out there, at an average age of seventy-nine, who were sterilized against their will under the auspices of the Utah State government, according to estimates by Tabery and other researchers.
Sorry, but this article is available to active subscribers only. Please log in or become a subscriber.