Aid With Strings Attached

Alice Mae Jackson died in 1969 at age 42 of breast cancer, but her daughter, Henrietta, age 61, is alive and is eligible to collect financial compensation from the state of North Carolina for the forced sterilization inflicted on her mother by government officials in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.

When Alice Mae Jackson was alive she received state aid with strings attached. During one of her reviews for continuance of state aid Alice Mae Jackson took three of her four children -- 2 girls and a boy -- to the Mecklenburg County welfare department. Mecklenburg welfare officials told her to get sterilized or the state would  take her children. Later government officials put Henrietta in an orphanage. After Alice Mae Jackson was sterilized she got Henrietta back.

James 1:27 Amplified Bible says, "External religious worship [religion as it is expressed in outward acts] that is pure and unblemished in the sight of God the Father is this: to visit and help and care for the orphans and widows in their affliction and need, and to keep oneself unspotted and uncontaminated from the world."

Aid is supposed to help people and be unspotted and uncontaminated with worldly strings like forced sterilization. Needing assistance is not shameful. Disabled or non-disabled we all need help in various ways. Chen Guangcheng, who became blind as a result of a childhood illness and now wears dark sunglasses, is a self-taught lawyer from China who helped the disabled win public benefits and aided farmers fighting illegal land seizures. Chen Guangcheng became internationally known for filing a 2005 class-action law suit against Chinese government officials for forced abortions and forced sterilizations practiced as part of China’s one-child policy. Later he endured physical and psychological abuse in jail and in house arrest. Chen Guangcheng was in house arrest with his wife, Yuan Weijing, and the couple's daughter. Their son was being "educated." Eventually the Chen family escaped to the United States. Chen Guangcheng, a US immigrant, testified before Congress on April 9, 2013, regarding human rights abuses in China.

Human rights violations such as abortion and forced sterilization are not God's will. God wants people to enjoy living. God the Son Jesus Christ says in John 10:10 Amplified Bible, "The thief comes only in order to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance (to the full, till it overflows)."

Most parents want their children to enjoy living. The daughter that Alice Mae Jackson did not take to her public assistance review, she had placed with other family.

Later on in life Henrietta met this daughter whose name is Sheila. They met as employees of a nursing home.

Alice, Henrietta, Sheila and their other siblings needed true help instead they received discrimination. Read more about their story at  http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/08/08/4223519/alice-mae-jackson-and-eugenics.html.

North Carolina is scheduled to pay $10 million shared equally to victims of forced sterilization. If those forcibly sterilized are dead, the family's estate is eligible for compensation. Forced sterilization was legal in North Carolina based on a 1933 law that allowed government workers to forcibly sterilize people deemed to be 'mentally diseased, feeble-minded or epileptic.' In Oklahoma earlier this year Governor Mary Fallin signed into law the Nondiscrimination in Treatment Act which takes effect November 1 and is modeled after anti-discriminatory language in federal law. The law, the first of its kind to be signed into law in the United States of America, will prevent health care providers like those connected to nursing homes from denying food, water and other assistance "on the basis of a view that treats extending the life of an elderly, disabled, or terminally ill individual as of lower value than extending the life of an individual who is younger, nondisabled, or not terminally ill."

Are creyentes (believers) working in your state to cut government waste like laws that permit abortion, forced sterilization and/or the denial of medical treatment based on disability and/or age? Are creyentes working in your state to improve government fiscal management by compensating victims of forced sterilization? Write to:
Michele F. Jackson
P. O. Box 2106
Woodbridge, Virginia 22195

Follow Michele F. Jackson on http://www.Twitter.com/Michelelove30.