Oregon Governor Plans Apology

By Associated Press

November 15, 2002, 11:57 PM EST

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Gov. John Kitzhaber plans to apologize next month to hundreds of Oregonians who were sterilized by the state, according to victims'
advocates.

A statement by Kitzhaber would make him the second governor, after Mark Warner of Virginia, to offer an official apology for his state's eugenics laws.

A spokesman for Kitzhaber, however, stopped short of saying the governor will offer a formal apology.

"What we're doing is declaring a human rights day in Oregon on Dec. 2 to acknowledge the progress made in the treatment of the developmentally disabled,"
spokesman Tom Towslee said Friday. "In the course of declaring that day he'll acknowledge past inappropriate acts ... in particular, forced sterilization."

Victims and social and professional organizations are seeking an official apology
for Oregon's sterilization of more than 2,600 residents between 1917 and 1981.

The victims, most of whom were in state care at the time, included epileptics,
homosexuals and unwanted children.

Word of the possible apology "knocked me backward. I just didn't know if he was
going to do it," said Kenneth Newman, who was sterilized at age 15, as was his
wife, Shirley. The Portland residents and other survivors have been invited to the
December event.

The debate over an apology has led to the discovery of decades of lost records
and unknown cases. The Oregon Youth Authority discovered at least 100
teenage girls were forcibly sterilized while they lived at the state training school
for delinquent girls before 1941.

Oregon was one of 33 states to pass sterilization laws in the early 20th century,
based on eugenics, the pseudoscientific movement to solve social problems by
preventing the "unfit" from having children. Nazi Germany used the U.S.
examples to legally justify programs that sterilized and killed millions.

Last year the Virginia General Assembly apologized for that state's eugenics
law, and Warner in May set up a memorial to the first woman sterilized under
eugenics.

Copyright © 2002, The Associated Press