Ethical Issues Of Eugenics In The 20th Century

It was at first shocking to see that the practice of eugenics survived so deep into the 20th century, but it was also surprsing to see that there is still no concrete resoltuion. Many techinical and ethical issues are raised by this case.

To start, the main ethical issue here is the fact that eugenics were actually carried out. As described by the background of the case, the eugenics were done through sterelization, and targeted young African American women on welfare. The targetting of this demographic rooted from the fact that their numbers were steadily increasing, and politicians were concerned at the amount of welfare that needed to be paid. A movement for sterilzing this demographic was initiated and they were painted as "morons" and "feebleminded". This gave way to referrals rooted in more subjective rationales, and cases such as a 14 year old being sterilized for "talking about boys" started to become more common. It was unethical to target a demographic like this with a movement, and force them to become sterelized for the
Those who were sterilized were often tricked into being sterelized, or were sterilzed against their will. For example, welfare benefits were witheld in order to force people into getting sterelized. The issue of consent is what I feel should be the main driving force behind concisering how the victims should be compensated. It's extremely difficult to put a monetary value on the lifelong, permanent change brought upon by a process they never directly agreed to go through. While I am unsure about how much compensation is enough, I believe that the fact that a compensation plan was halted in a State vote is completely irresponsible behavior by the government. Given the amount of cases, and the amount of time that the issue has remained unresolved, the NC government should take responsibilty and find a way to compensate these victims for acts that no one should be subjected