West Germany's compensation policy deliberately excluded people who were realtives of victims of the »euthanasia« murders and people who were forcibly sterilized. The Federal Compensation Act of 1953 did not recognize their suffering as the result of »typical National Socialist injustice«. Even the »Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring« continued to exist formally in parts of the Federal Republic until 1974. It had been repealed in the Soviet occupation zone before the GDR was established.

Up into the 1960s, debates about compensation payments in West Germany often demonstrated a fundamental endorsement of eugenic sterilizations. After 1945, the law was  indirectly confirmed through entitlements due to formal errors in the »hereditary health procedures« as »lawful«. Applicants encountered the same assessors who had been responsible for their forced sterilization. Former »hereditary health judges« Werner Villinger (1887–1961) and Helmut Ehrhardt (1914–1997) appeared as experts before the German Parliamentary Committee for Restitution in 1961 – and refused compensation for victims.

In 1987, the victims founded the Bund der »Euthanasie«-Geschädigten und Zwangssterilisierten (Federation of the People Damaged by »Euthanasia« and who Underwent Compulsory Sterilisation) so that they could continue their struggle for recognition on an organised footing. A year later, the Bundestag declared the forced sterilization law a »National Socialist injustice«. In 1998, it formally revoked the judgments of the »hereditary health courts«. Only in 2007 did it outlaw the law. However, in accordance with to the Federal Compensation Law, the victims of »euthanasia« and forced sterilization still do not have any entitlement to compensation – even if they can receive some recompensation after a sort of hardship ruling.