{"id":179070,"date":"2018-02-23T09:33:08","date_gmt":"2018-02-23T14:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=179070"},"modified":"2020-09-22T00:43:57","modified_gmt":"2020-09-22T05:43:57","slug":"black-woman-sterilized-eugenic-planned-parenthood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/black-woman-sterilized-eugenic-planned-parenthood\/","title":{"rendered":"Black woman sterilized due to eugenic agenda of Planned Parenthood board member"},"content":{"rendered":"
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At the age of 14, after becoming pregnant from a violent rape,\u00a0the eugenics board of the State of North Carolina decided Elaine Riddick should not have any more children and sterilized her without consent. Riddick claims the reason she was sterilized without her knowledge or approval was because the state of North Carolina had ruled her “feebleminded,” a degrading term commonly used in eugenics. She recently told her emotional story in the powerful documentary film, produced by Life Dynamics, Inc., called\u00a0Maafa21: Black Genocide in 21st Century America<\/a>, which Live Action is screening on social media this month.\u00a0North Carolina’s eugenics program was funded in part by a member of Planned Parenthood<\/a> founder Margaret Sanger’s Board of Directors and close friend<\/a> of the Federation — Clarence Gamble. Gamble sat on the board<\/a> of Sanger’s American Birth Control League (ABCL) as well as<\/a> Planned Parenthood<\/a>, and was also a financier of Sanger’s birth control crusade. In addition, he helped to fund<\/a> the North Carolina Eugenics program.<\/p>\n

Sanger, an established member of the American Eugenics Society, stacked her organization with like-minded men and women. In 1942, the ABCL changed its name to Planned Parenthood.<\/p>\n

\"Planned

Clarence Gamble, a director of Margaret Sanger’s American Birth Control League<\/p><\/div>\n

Elaine Riddick was kidnapped, molested, and became pregnant as a result of rape at 13 years of age. At the time, Riddick was living with her grandmother, Maggie Woodard, known as “Miss Peaches,” when a social worker with the State discovered her pregnancy. Her name was Sue L. Casebolt,\u00a0and she referred Elaine’s case to the state’s Eugenics Board. Casebolt\u00a0had been installed<\/a> as the Executive Secretary of the North Carolina Eugenics Board in 1961.<\/p>\n

\"Planned

Elaine Riddick speaks about eugenic sterilization in Maafa21<\/p><\/div>\n

According to Maafa21:<\/p>\n

At a board meeting held three weeks later, she stated that she intended to keep a file on every child whose name reached her desk so that they could be picked up as soon as they reached childbearing age. Casebolt was still on the board<\/a> in 1968 when it approved the sterilization of Elaine Riddick.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Planned

Sue Casebolt on eugenics board that sterilized Elaine Riddick (Image credit: Maafa21)<\/p><\/div>\n

Riddick said that her grandmother was illiterate and did not understand what she was signing. Knowing this, the social worker pressured her to sign with an\u00a0\u201cX,\u201d <\/b>threatening to send\u00a0Elaine to an orphanage, and remove her grandmother’s government aid for food if she did not. Unfortunately, the document her grandmother was pressured to sign was not a medical consent form for the birth, but a consent to have Elaine sterilized after\u00a0she gave birth to her <\/span>son Tony, now a successful businessman.<\/p>\n

“I did not find out that they had sterilized me until I was nineteen years old,” Riddick says in Maafa21, adding:<\/p>\n

I asked the State of North Carolina why they did this to me and they said that [they did it] because I was feebleminded. That I would not be able to take care of myself…. That I was incompetent…. They were saying that feeblmindness is hereditary. So, they sterilized me so I would not produce my kind. Mind you, I am not illiterate nor am I feebleminded…. They sterilized kids, my understanding…-as young as eight years of age. I don’t know what an eight year-old can do that could cause them to do this to them? The only reason I can give myself is that [it’s] because they’re Black.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n