W.Va. eyes repeal of forced-sterilization law

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — West Virginia officials are looking into updating or repealing a state law that allows for the involuntary sterilization of “mentally incompetent” people. West Virginia is the only state that still has such a law on its books. Mark Bold of the Christian Law Institute in Lynchburg, Va., is advocating striking the law and compensating those were sterilized in the past. State Department of Health and Human Resources spokeswoman Marsha Dadisman tells The Charleston Gazette (http://bit.ly/MAwOdk) that the agency is looking at updating the language in that chapter of the law. Officials said sterilization was used regularly in the 1920s and ‘30s but that it hadn’t been used since the 1950s.