Sadie Long and Janice Black have been friends for several years. Long is also Black's legal guardian and caretaker. Black cleans hospital equipment at a medical center in North Carolina and has developmental and physical disabilities.
One day Long noticed a scar on Black's stomach and asked Black about it. Black said it was the result of an operation done to fix her. Long didn't pursue the matter at that time.
A Dutch proverb says, "Sooner or later, the truth comes to light." Long learned about North Carolina forced sterilization practices through news reports.
Proverbs 17:17 Amplified Bible says, "A friend loves at all times, and is born, as is a brother, for adversity." Long helped Black to learn that Black had been forcibly sterilized by North Carolina state when she was 18 because the state considered her to have the mental capacity of a seven-year-old and at-risk for becoming pregnant. Sadie Long says about Janice Black, "Janice never had a boyfriend, she's never been out on a date, she's never been sexually involved;" read more of their story at http://www.wfae.org/post/nc-eugenics-victims-story.
Black is now in her 60s and also a resident of Mecklenburg county which is the same county where Wallace Kuralt worked as a welfare director from 1945 to 1972, according to The Charlotte Observer and said in a 1970 interview that “we’ve pursued sterilization of the inadequate parents more actively than any place in the world... Our activities (in birth control and sterilization) have caused us to give aid to less than 50 percent of the families we would have had to give aid to if it were not for these activities.” Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/08/08/4223519/alice-mae-jackson-and-eugenics.html#storylink=cpy.
Long has been helping Black to go public with her story and play a role like William Lynch, Charles Holt, Alice Mae Jackson, Elaine Riddick, Nial Ramirez and others who have been sterilized and seeking financial compensation from the state of North Carolina. North Carolina is the only US state set to pay compensation to victims of state-sponsored sterilization even though state-sponsored sterilization occurred across the US.
Disabled and non-disabled we all need friends. God the Son Jesus Christ is a friend and a model for friendship. John 15:12-14 Amplified Bible says, "This is My commandment: that you love one another [just] as I have loved you. No one has greater love [no one has shown stronger affection] than to lay down (give up) his own life for his friends. You are My friends if you keep on doing the things which I command you to do." Jesus Christ died for people's sin once and for all time. Jesus Christ rose from the dead in three days. Jesus Christ insists that His people die to selfishness and love people.
Sadie Long and Deana Copeland are both legal guardians and caretakers for persons with disabilities. Copeland is the legal guardian and caretaker of Andrea Hood who has cerebral palsy, spina bifida and autonomic dysreflexia. Hood requires full-time care. As a caretaker of Hood, Copeland receives $1,400.00 through a Medicaid program.
Until recently, the Affordable Care Act prohibited guardians from serving as paid caretakers of an adult child with disabilities. Also regulations to allow parents, spouses and other relatives to serve as both guardians and paid caretakers is still being worked out. Read more at http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/08/disability_rights_advocates_fa.html.
Many families feel that their disabled family members will have a better life being cared for by family as opposed to state staff.
Charles Holt was 19 and living in a North Carolina state institution when he was forcibly sterilized. Charlie Follett was a teenager living in a California state institution when he was forcibly sterilized.
California has more than 20,000 state-sponsored sterilizations and is believed to be the US state with the most sterilizations based on laws like the Virginia sterilization law upheld in the 1927 US Supreme Court decision Buck v. Bell. However, all state records have not been made public. California is also the state where sizable numbers of Chinese started coming to America in the 1800s to make a living mining gold. China today also has state-sponsored sterilization. Feng Zhongxia was subjected to a forced abortion, a forced sterilization and other evils. Philip P. Pan reports in The Washington Post article "Who Controls the Family?, "She recounted that she was seven months pregnant and on the run when she learned that local officials had detained more than a dozen of her relatives and wouldn't release them unless she returned for an abortion.
"My aunts, uncles, cousins, my pregnant younger sister, my in-laws, they were all taken to the family planning office," she said. "Many of them didn't get food or water, and all of them were severely beaten." Some of the relatives were allowed to call her, and they pleaded with her to come home.
Feng called the family planning officials. "They told me they would peel the skin off my relatives and I would only see their corpses if I didn't come back," she said. The next day, she turned herself in. A doctor examined her, then stuck a needle into her uterus. About 24 hours later, she delivered the dead fetus. "It was a small life," she said quietly.
Afterward, she said, the family planning workers insisted on sterilizing her, too. "I'm a human being. How can they treat me like that?" she asked;" read more at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/26/AR2005082601756_2.html.
Some say abortion, sterilization and discrimination against the disabled and others is necessary to treat society. However, God the Father, God the Son Jesus Christ and God the Holy Spirit says human life is valuable in all its varieties and stages.
If you are a guardian and/or caretaker of a person with disabilities, what are your thoughts about the Affordable Care Act? Also please share stories about victims of abortion and sterilization. Write to:
Michele F. Jackson
P. O. Box 2106
Woodbridge, Virginia 22195
Follow Michele F. Jackson on http://www.Twitter.com/Michelelove30.
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