Aug. 4, 2011
Poor, a victim of child molestation and pregnant from rape, 14-year-old Elaine Riddick went into a North Carolina hospital in 1968 to give birth to her son. Though she wouldn’t know it until years later, she would leave the hospital robbed of the ability to ever bear children again.
On top of the poverty, abuse, and neglect that marked her childhood, Riddick had the misfortune of becoming the target of the North Carolina eugenics board, a 5-person state committee responsible for ordering the sterilization of thousands of individuals in the name of social welfare during the last century.
