'' The state of Virginia has become the first American state to apologise for the forced sterilisation of thousands of its citizens as part of a eugenics, or selective breeding, programme in the last century.

In all, 30 states conducted sterilisation programmes - in Virginia's case until 1979 - in an effort to wipe out human deficiencies and vices assumed to be hereditary.

[....]

Starting in 1924, more than 7,000 people considered genetically inferior - most of them poor, uneducated, black or mentally retarded - were forcibly sterilised in the Commonwealth of Virginia. ''

- BBC.co.uk