Virginia 'Regretful' Over Forced Sterilizations

Lawmakers Refuse To Apologize for 55-Year Policy

By BILL BASKERVILL .c The Associated Press

LYNCHBURG, Va. (Feb. 15) - In the 1940s, the state labeled Raymond W. Hudlow a "mental defective" and surgically sterilized him.

Years later, his nation honored him as a war hero, awarding him the Bronze Star for valor, the Purple Heart and the Prisoner of War Medal for service in World War II.

Now the Virginia General Assembly has refused to apologize to Hudlow and the more than 7,400 other Virginians sterilized under the state's eugenics program between 1924 and 1979.

"They treated us just like hogs, like we had no feelings," said Hudlow, now 75.

Instead, the state Senate voted Wednesday to express "profound regret" for the General Assembly's action 77 years ago that led to forced sterilizations. The House of Delegates already passed the resolution, and Gov. Jim Gilmore said he believes an expression of regret is sufficient.

"It seems that there's a trend in this country to rewrite history, and now we're going to go back and stir the pot on history and take some of those most unfortunate chapters in our history and relive them for no real purpose," Sen. Warren E. Barry said from the Senate floor.

But Hudlow says the trauma inflicted on him when he was a teen-ager in the wards of the Virginia Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded has never left him. He has more flashbacks about that time than the terror of combat and imprisonment by the Germans, he said.

"I remember this just as it was yesterday," Hudlow said. "It has always been in my mind. It has never left me."

Although eugenics eventually was discredited as political and social prejudice rather than scientific fact, neither Virginia nor any of the 29 other states that conducted eugenical sterilizations has ever compensated or apologized to the more than 60,000 victims.

The Virginia law was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1927. That ruling, which still stands, led a federal judge in 1984 to throw out a class-action lawsuit filed by eugenics victims of the state.

Virginia's Southern aristocracy, acting under a eugenics law that served as a model for the rest of the nation - and for Adolph Hitler - tried to purify the white race from 1924 to 1979. Targeted was virtually any human shortcoming believed to be a hereditary disease that could be stamped out by surgical sterilization, such as mental illness, mental retardation, epilepsy, criminal behavior, alcoholism and immorality.

Hudlow's malady: repeatedly running away from home to avoid beatings by his father.

When his father told the "welfare lady" that "he couldn't control me," Hudlow said, his reproductive fate was sealed. He was 16 years old.

"I was picked up by the sheriff at home. He handcuffed me and took me" to the Colony near Lynchburg, where most of Virginia's sterilizations were performed. A county judge in 1942 granted the Colony's request to sterilize Hudlow, identified in the court order as an "inmate" of the Colony.

"They just came and got me before I woke up one morning. They wheeled me and throwed me up on the operating table," he said.

No one explained what they were doing, Hudlow said. "The only way I found out, an employee on Ward 7 told me I wouldn't be able to father any children.

Sixteen months after the operation, Hudlow was released from the Colony and was drafted into the Army. He served as the radioman for his platoon leader, was wounded and spent seven months in German prison camps.

Hudlow decided to make the military a career and served 21 years in the Army and Air Force.

Phil Theisen, president of the Lynchburg Depressive Disorders Association, has urged state lawmakers to make a strong, clear apology to the eugenics victims.

"This is a skeleton in the closet for Virginia that will continue to be there until it's addressed forthright," Theisen said. "An apology would be a historic first, and that makes it all the more important.

While some lawmakers supported a strong apology by the state, others, including Virginia House member Mitchell Van Yahres, said it would only draw fire.

"It carries a connotation of guilt that I don't want to be associated with," Van Yahres said.

AP-NY-02-15-01 0206EST

-- Rich (howe9@shentel.net), February 15, 2001

Answers

"It carries a connotation of guilt thatI don't want to be associated with." LOL.

-- KoFE (your@town.USA), February 15, 2001.

I would guess that sterilization during the 40s meant castration.

Naturally we are too enlightened to do this nowadays. Or is there a modern equivelent? How about in-utero testing that determines that the fetus is destined to be a retardo? Ergo, abortion. How about chemical castration of incorrigible sexual predators. I don't know if this is being done but it might be a "humane" alternative to life- incarceration (assuming it works).

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), February 15, 2001.

They key word in the whole article is "compensated", as in:

"...neither Virginia nor any of the 29 other states that conducted eugenical sterilizations has ever compensated or apologized to the more than 60,000 victims. "

The state legislators are balking for the simple reason that they don't want to pay compensation. Apologizing looks too much like culpability. So they temporize instead.

Now, just as an experiment, take all the dollar notes out of your purse or wallet and take a BIG whiff. Those things just flat-out stink, don't they? Ask any bank teller, they'll tell you how that smell just clings to them and they learn to hate it.

This has been a public service announcement.

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), February 15, 2001.

LN, I agree with your conclusion.

An admission by the legislature that the policy was a bad one wouldn't seem to be all that difficult to accomplish. Those responsible are dead and buried. There's no CYA here.

It has to be about money. Gov. Gilmore was swept into office on his promise to reduce property taxes on private vehicles on a set schedule of yearly reductions. Lo and behold his budget forecasts are now found to have been pie in the sky. What a shocker, eh?

The legislature is threatening to halt the reduction instead of cutting the budget enough to allow for the shortfall in tax revenues. Fortunately Gilmore has stuck to his guns - to this point. He doesn't have to fight for it all that hard because VA does not allow governors to hold office two consecutive terms. I give Gilmore credit for working to keep his promise.

-- Rich (howe9@shentel.net), February 15, 2001.