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In 1948, as Naomi Schenck was rushed into a North Carolina operating room because she was having a miscarriage, the then-17-year-old newlywed heard a doctor say: "Cut her."
"I didn't know what 'cut her' meant," said Schenck, now 83. She soon found out: Schenck said she was given a spinal tap and then sterilized against her will. Some 7,600 others were sterilized from 1929 to 1974 under the state's eugenics program. Most were either forced or coerced into the procedure, though a small number of people chose to be sterilized.
Now, Schenck is among 520 sterilization victims and family members waiting to be paid a portion of the $10 million fund established by North Carolina to compensate victims. The Office for Justice of Sterilization Victims estimates about 1,800 victims are still alive. Their deadline to file claims is Monday.
"I'll take whatever they give me, if they give me anything," said Schenck, whose claim is still pending.
Eugenics programs in the U.S. were widely perceived as a legitimate effort to improve society by sterilizing people the state deemed...