history
“I think it behooves the state to not forget this history.”
Historian Alex Stern collected 20,000 names of people who were sterilized as part of California's eugenics program from 1909 to 1979.
The law targeted "mental disease, which may have been inherited." In practice, that meant the poor, social misfits, and people with low IQ.
She estimates about 800 are still alive.