National News
Jul 7, 2021
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California is poised to approve reparations up to $25,000 to victims who were among the thousands of people — some as young as 13 — who decades ago were sterilized because state officials deemed them unfit to have children.
The payments, part of the state’s new $262.6 billion operating budget that is awaiting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature, will make California at least the third state after Virginia and North Carolina to pay victims of the so-called eugenics movement that peaked in the 1930s. Proponents believed sterilizing people with mental illnesses, physical disabilities and other so-called undesirable traits would improve the human race.