U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis has taken his concern for the victims of eugenics to the national level, and he deserves applause.
 
The freshman Republican senator co-sponsored a bill with Democratic Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware that ensures the victims who receive state compensation will not see a decrease in their federal benefits, such as Medicaid or disability payments. The Senate passed it unanimously.
 
The move extends Tillis' work when he was North Carolina House speaker and supported legislation by Democrat Larry Womble to compensate the state's victims of eugenics, a debunked science that called for sterilizing tens of thousands of American citizens against their will and often without their knowledge. Among the roster of victims were many minorities, single women, people of low income or those adjudged to be of diminished mental capacity. The sick theory behind it is that the victimized were not fit to reproduce.
 
From the start, the bipartisan effort on behalf of eugenics victims has seemed an outlier for the state's Republicans. Since 2010, the General Assembly, led by Senate Majority Leader Phil Berger, has pursued a controversial, far-right agenda and has steam-rolled Democrats in putting it through. The action items, as we all now know, included cutting funds for education, decreasing voter access, radically changing the tax code from progressive to regressive, passing initiatives against same-sex marriage and, for extra measure, strangling the state's burgeoning movie industry.
 
Meanwhile, while it's true our state maintained one of the longest-running sterilization programs in the country, from 1929 to 1974, it was equally true Republicans had nothing to gain politically by helping eugenics victims. Democrats had punted on the issue when they were in power. No one in conservative media that I'm aware of had made eugenics a top issue. Before the state legislature took up the cause, it wasn't much in conversation across the state, either. In short, Republicans' conservative base would not have punished them if they had simply ignored eugenics altogether.
 
So this has always felt suspiciously to me like politicians wanting to do the right thing, and I'll take that when I can get it.
 
A few on the right did not want to spend money compensating the state's victims, during the debate here. But Tillis has a word for them.
 
He told a reporter earlier this month: "I would say to them, particularly those who believe that government should not take your property - and that anyone whose property is taken, they should be given proper restitution - that there is no more grievous example of a government taking than what occurred with this eugenics program."
 
Among refreshing aspects of Tillis' Senate bill is that it is bipartisan, like the North Carolina effort, and proactive. Both those features can be rare qualities for D.C. legislation.
 
Tillis has said he did not know of a case where someone compensated for eugenics had seen a reduction in other benefits, but he wanted to head off the possibility. It is looking like his support will continue. A House version is presently moving along.
 
Shining a light
 
Now, on the subject of North Carolina's role in eugenics, no one should leave with the impression everything is hunky-dory. The payments of $35,000 are better than nothing but are inadequate for people who were forcefully denied the joy of having children, or the choice to have more children. Also, of North Carolina's more than 7,000 suspected victims, just 220 people have actually received any money. Victims such as Fayetteville's Mary "Bunny" English have seen their claims rejected for lack of paperwork. This is a high standard since county governments and hospitals would have had no incentive to keep on hand a record of their deeds, even though they were legal at the time.
 
But state legislators deserve credit for even putting this issue on the map, after a Winston-Salem Journal series in 2002 exposed the dark history.
 
In an op-ed for USA Today in September, Tillis wrote about Willis Lynch of Halifax County, who was sterilized at age 14 because he was prone to get into fights and had been deemed feeble-minded.
 
Lynch went on to serve in the U.S. Army and would later become a pillar of his community, writes Tillis.
 
"The gross moral injustice perpetrated against Willis Lynch wasn't just an isolated incident," Tillis said. "It was part of one of the darkest and most shameful chapters of modern American history that has flown under the public's radar for far too long."
 
Amen, and may he continue to shine a light.

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