"While California had the highest number of sterilizations, North Carolina's eugenics program which operated from 1933 to 1977, was the most aggressive of the 32 states that had eugenics programs.[37] An IQ of 70 or lower meant sterilization was appropriate in North Carolina.[38] The North Carolina Eugenics Board almost always approved proposals brought before them by local welfare boards.[38] Of all states, only North Carolina gave social workers the power to designate people for sterilization.[37] "Here, at last, was a method of preventing unwanted pregnancies by an acceptable, practical, and inexpensive method," wrote Wallace Kuralt in the March 1967 journal of the N.C. Board of Public Welfare. "The poor readily adopted the new techniques for birth control."

Eugenics, the social movement claiming to improve the genetic features of human populations through selective breeding and sterilization,[1] based on the idea that it is possible to distinguish between superior and inferior elements of society,[2] played a significant role in the history and culture of the United States prior to its involvement in World War II.[3]

Eugenics was practised in the United States many years before eugenics programs in Nazi Germany[4] and U.S. programs provided much of the inspiration for the latter.[5][6][7] Stefan Kühl has documented the consensus between Nazi race policies and those of eugenicists in other countries, including the United States, and points out that eugenicists understood Nazi policies and measures as the realization of their goals and demands.[5]

A hallmark of the Progressive Era of the late 19th and early 20th century, now generally associated with racist and nativist elements (as the movement was to some extent a reaction to a change in emigration from Europe) rather than scientific genetics, eugenics was considered a method of preserving and improving the dominant groups in the population.

Today eugenics in the United States is still officially permitted. Between 2006 and 2010 close to 150 women were sterilized in Californian prisons without state approval. Between 1997 and 2010, the state paid $147,460 to doctors for tubal ligations
History