Editing Caspar Weinberger (section)

===''Relf v. Weinberger''===
In 1973, the [[Southern Poverty Law Center]] named Weinberger as a defendant in a case that sought restitution for the forced non-consensual sterilization and medical experimentation on three young Black American girls, [[The Relf Sisters|Minnie Lee, Mary Alice, and Katie Relf]] in Montgomery, Alabama. An employee of Montgomery's federally-funded [[Community Action Agencies|Community Action]] organization took the Relf sisters to a family planning clinic under the pretext of needing “shots.” Staff gave Katie Relf a then-experimental birth control shot as well as inserted a contraceptive IUD device without parental knowledge or consent. On a separate occasion, doctors surgically sterilized Minnie Lee and Mary Alice who were twelve and fourteen years old respectively.<ref>{{cite news |title=RELF V. WEINBERGER |url=https://www.splcenter.org/seeking-justice/case-docket/relf-v-weinberger |website=Southern Poverty Law Center |access-date=January 2, 2022}}</ref> At the time of the suit, the [[Office of Economic Opportunity]] was preparing to hand over funding and control of its associated family planning clinics to Weinberger's Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

The SPLC's complaint shows that the O.E.O. recently began providing funding for such sterilization procedures, while top OEO personnel intentionally did not distribute a medical memo containing guidelines on obtaining patient consent for such operations. [[Warren Hern|Dr. Warren M. Hern]] authored the memo, and ultimately resigned in outrage that the guidelines were not distributed. Copies of the memo, which included age of consent laws whose criteria the Relf girls did not meet, sat undistributed in a DC warehouse. At the time of the suit, Weinberger's most recent approved Health, Education, and Welfare budget included specific funding allotments for sterilization procedures, and thus he was named a defendant in the case. A district court involved in Relf V. Weinberger hearings found that anywhere from 100,000 to 150,000 poor people were sterilized annually using federal dollars, and some among those sterilized were coerced into the procedures by doctors who threatened to cut off welfare benefits.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Levin, Dees, Palmer |first1=Joseph, Morris, Frederick |title=Relf V. Weinberger Complaint |url=https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/d6_legacy_files/Relf_Original_Complaint.pdf |publisher=Southern Poverty Law Center |access-date=January 2, 2022}}</ref> The case shined fresh light on numerous{{such as|date=July 2022}} state sterilization and eugenics programs nationwide and led to compensation funds and settlements for some victims{{citation needed|date=July 2022}}.