`The doctor told me I had been butchered’
It is hard for Elaine Riddick to talk about how the state of North Carolina sterilized her without her knowledge at the age of 14, changing her life forever. But she manages to wipe away the tears and garner the strength to tell her story to anyone who will listen. After Riddick became pregnant from a rape, doctors on the Eugenics Board of North Carolina decided in 1968 that she was too “feeble-minded” to ever be a good mother and wanted to ensure that she never would get pregnant again. So doctors tied her tubes and didn’t tell her. Thirty-eight years later, Riddick, a 52-year-old with a quiet demeanor, has emerged as a voice for thousands of victims of state-sponsored sterilizations that were part of the eugenics movement in the United States from the 1920s to the 1970s. Riddick and others are coming forward and forcing states to address their roles in a controversial social experiment that went awry.
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