Virginia considers 'payment' to eugenics victims

Eighty-five years after U.S. Supreme Court upheld a Virginia eugenics law allowing the state to forcibly sterilize anyone it considered genetically deficient, a state lawmaker is calling on Gov. Bob McDonnell and the General Assembly to make a “symbolic payment” to any living victims of the law.

That Virginia law led to the forced sterilization of about 7,500 Virginians between 1924 and 1979 for everything from mental illness to alcoholism and thousands more in other states that modeled their laws on Virginia’s. And now, said Del. Patrick Hope, D-Arlington, it’s time to “start the healing process” in the state where it all began.