A recent AP article about the NC’s forced sterilization program quotes Georgia State law professor, Paul Lombardo, as saying in regards to those who were part of the process to sterilize innocent people, “This wasn’t just a bunch of evil people running around.  Many of them really wanted to alleviate suffering.”

Let’s hope that isn’t one of the lessons we learn from this dark chapter in our state’s history.  These were evil people.

Sterilizing people against their will knowing it wasn’t in those individuals’ interests wasn’t alleviating any suffering.  The sterilization law specifically allowed sterilizations in the “public interest” regardless of what that meant to the individuals.

Mr. Lombardo should tell the living victims that their sterilizations to reduce the state’s welfare rolls wasn’t evil.  Maybe he should tell the pleading victim(s) who begged the Eugenics Board not to sterilize her that those people weren’t evil.

The path to hell is paved with good intentions.  There is always some “greater good” claim for the worst evil we have ever seen in this world.  That “greater good” doesn’t justify the evil means to achieve that “good.”  Name any evil leader, even Hitler, and he had some “greater good” justification for his evil.  Just because he identified some broader social goal doesn’t make him any less evil.

What makes Mr. Lombardo’s argument even weaker is the fact that North Carolina sterilized about 77 percent of the victims after World War II, when other states stopped forced sterilizations presumably because they learned the evil (see the Nazis) that can arise from the use of trying to dictate who should reproduce (negative eugenics).

Those who were part of the forced sterilization system in North Carolina had no excuses.  They knew it was wrong.  Sterilizations weren’t occuring to reduce suffering,  In fact, ironically, Lombardo, in the same article, states that people were being sterilized because “anybody who generates social costs shouldn’t be allowed to have children.”  If that’s true, what suffering is being addressed?

Actually, the sterilizations were not always just about social costs–there were other reasons especially early on, and in particular, the desire to socially engineer the population.

There may be rare instances where someone in the sterilization process was only helping to sterilize severely retarded individuals who needed to be sterilized for medical reasons.  Upon informed and voluntary consent of parents or guardians, such an act wasn’t evil.  However, it wasn’t appropriate either given that the state was involved in pushing the sterilizations, along with its use of force to ensure the individual was sterilized.

It would be inappropriate to claim that everyone who was somehow associated with the forced sterilization program was “evil.”  However, if we are to discuss those involved in the North Carolina’s sterilization program in general terms, they certainly were evil.

There’s a lot of focus on compensating the living victims of the sterilization program.  However, probably more important, are the lessons we learn from the state deciding who may reproduce and who may not.

One lesson (of many) I certainly hope that we learn is anyone who physicially invades the body of another without consent and takes away possibly the most fundamental natural right (reproduction) for the “greater good” is evil.  Especially when that violation occurs through using the power of the state.