Vermont House unanimously supports eugenics apology

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - Legislators in the Vermont House have unanimously supported a resolution apologizing to all Vermonters and their families and descendants who were harmed by state-sanctioned eugenics policies and practices that led to sterilizations.

Under the eugenics movement, some Vermonters were placed on a state-sanctioned list of “mental defectives” and degenerates and sent to state institutions. They were largely of mixed French Canadian and Native American heritage or were poor, rural white people. Some had surgery after Vermont in 1931 became one of more than two dozen states to pass a law allowing voluntary sterilizations for “human betterment.”

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