(CNN) California will pay $7.5 million to surviving victims of its forced sterilization program. Much of California's eugenics program was outlawed in 1979, but laws ending the sterilization of prisoners were not passed until 2014, Montes-Irueste told CNN. California led the way in forced sterilizationsThirty-two states had eugenics programs, but California outpaced them all. The movement even caught the attention of members of the Nazi party, who asked California eugenicists in the 1930s for advice on how to run their own sterilization program. In other states, the sterilization program would stop and start due to legal challenges, but California's ran strong for more than half a century, Cogdell said.

Source: CNN July 14, 2021 04:30 UTC