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Virginia Pays Sterilization Victims

Eugenics law targeted “defective” people.

Victims who were involuntarily sterilized at one of six Virginia institutions won a major victory Thursday when the Virginia General Assembly agreed to set aside $400,000 to compensate them at $25,000 each. More than 7,000 people were sterilized against their will between 1924 and 1979 under the Virginia Eugenics Sterilization Act, a bogus movement aimed at improving the human race’s overall genetic structure by forcibly keeping “defective” people from reproducing. Only 11 victims are still alive, however; two have died in the past year.

Read it at AP

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