Indiana apologizes for role in eugenics

mindi77

Love your children....
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INDIANAPOLIS - An Indiana official publicly apologized for the state's role 100 years ago in pioneering state-authorized sterilization of "imbeciles," paupers and others it deemed undesirable.


Health Commissioner Dr. Judith Monroe expressed regret on behalf of the state Thursday for its passing of the first such eugenics law. She also unveiled a historic marker that will stand across from the Statehouse.
"It is one (law) that we do regret but we should not forget," she said.
In 1907, then-Gov. J. Frank Hanly signed a state law widely regarded as the first in the world to permit sterilization in a misguided effort to improve the quality of the human race.


Coleman was 15 years old in 1971 when a county judge gave her mother approval to have a doctor perform a tubal ligation on her under the guise of having her appendix removed.
In court papers, her mother said Coleman was "somewhat retarded." But Coleman said the real reason her mother wanted her sterilized was that an older, unmarried sister had just become pregnant and their mother worried about being stuck with raising grandchildren.
Coleman was 17, married and eager to have children when she learned the truth about her surgery.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070413/ap_on_re_us/eugenics_anniversary

more at link

I think this is sad, that they would decide who was undeserving of having children. What do you all think?
 
I've lived here for 34 years and never heard of this! A bit of a shocker, to be sure. I'm glad they apologized, but I am surprised and saddened it was something we were a part of, even a century ago. :(

ETA: I just caught the date of the second part of the story, 1971! :eek: I was born here in 1972! That's just sad and pathetic!!!
 

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