It's time for California to compensate its forced-sterilization victims

[niyad]

It's time for California to compensate its forced-sterilization victims
Forced sterilization

California's "sorry" isn't enough for the more than 20,000 is coercively sterilized
Virginia and North Carolina each pay reparations to those they forcibly sterilized; California should also

Last week, Virginia became the second state to compensate victims of one of the most shameful acts in U.S. history: state-sponsored forced sterilization. Virginia has agreed to give each surviving victim $25,000. North Carolina was the first to compensate its victims, setting aside $50,000 per individual in 2013. Now it's time for California to compensate its sterilization victims.
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California officially apologized to victims for its repugnant act in 2003. But just 10 years later, the state's prison system was found to have been sterilizing dozens of female inmates without lawful consent. Has our thinking really changed? Defending the cost of such surgeries, one prison gynecologist said, “Over a 10-year period, that isn't a huge amount of money … compared to what you save in welfare paying for these unwanted children — as they procreated more.”

Why isn't an apology enough? Why reparations? Our laws are steeped in this common-sense principle. If a physician amputates the wrong limb, the only acceptable remedy is monetary compensation for the harm, not an apology. Even under California eminent domain laws, the state must pay fair market value for property the state takes. Should not sterilization victims be compensated for such an egregious governmental taking?
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California was the third state to enact a forced sterilization law; it's now time for California to be the third state to compensate its victims.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0306-bold-forced-sterilization-compensation-20150306-story.html