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Remember that coerced hysterectomies were a central part of US policy long before ICE was created.
Forced sterilization and eugenics programs were used as a means of controlling “undesirable” populations. Hitler studied and based Nazi race science on American practices.
Forced sterilization and eugenics programs were used as a means of controlling “undesirable” populations. Hitler studied and based Nazi race science on American practices.
Starting (officially) in 1907, forced sterilization became legal in 32 states as a form of eugenics. It was used to prevent anyone with “undesirable traits” — mental illnesses & disabilities, immigrants, BIPOC, poor people, unmarried or “feebleminded” women from having children.
California led the country in numbers of forced sterilization for over 70 years—and often without victims full knowledge or consent. At least 60,000 people were legally sterilized between 1907 and 1970. But the practice never really ended.
Source: Andrea Estrada, UCSB
Source: Andrea Estrada, UCSB
In 2013, the Center for Investigative Reporting found at least 148 incarcerated women had received tubal ligations w/o their consent between 2006-2010. Coerced sterilizations are used in plea-deals and sentence reductions to this day.
Police and prosecutors specifically target poor Black, Indigenous, and Latinx people. When we consider the demographic breakdown of who is in our state prisons, it’s clear coercive sterilizations are still being used as part of an on-going, genocidal American eugenics project.
A Center for Investigative reporting article revealed California paid doctors $147,460 to preform tubal ligations that formerly incarcerated women say were done under coercion.
http://cironline.org/reports/female-inmates-sterilized-california-prisons-without-approval-4917
http://cironline.org/reports/female-inmates-sterilized-california-prisons-without-approval-4917
Southern states like Mississippi and North Carolina also had eugenics programs in hospitals and detention centers to target Black people. A third of sterilizations were done on girls under 18, and as young as 9. http://rockcenter.nbcnews.com/_news/2011/11/07/8640744-victims-speak-out-about-north-carolina-sterilization-program-which-targeted-women-young-girls-and-blacks
View your state’s eugenics history in the University of Vermont’s comprehensive database here.
https://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/
https://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/
The history forced sterilization of indigenous people, especially women, deserves its own thread. It’s estimated that “as many as 25-50% of Native American women were sterilized between 1970 and 1976.” This is an act of genocide to attempt to eradicate entire nations.
There is so much more to say about the history of American eugenics and the systematic extermination of poor, non-white, and disabled people -- and especially indigenous women.
The United States has been a fascist, genocidal project from its inception.
The United States has been a fascist, genocidal project from its inception.
One specifically disturbing case: "Relf v. Weinberger: Mary Alice & Minnie Relf, poor African American sisters from Alabama, were sterilized at the ages of 14 and 12. Their mother, who was illiterate, had signed an “X” on a piece of paper she believed gave permission..."
for her daughters, who were both mentally disabled, to receive birth control shots. In 1974, the SPLC iled a lawsuit on behalf of the Relf sisters, revealing that 100,000 to 150,000 poor people were being sterilized each year under federally-funded programs."
To learn the story of Carrie Buck, a poor woman involuntarily institutionalized for being "feeble-minded and promiscuous" and forcibly sterilized to not pass down these "defects," I recommend this documentary:
Learn about how Hitler cited America's, and specifically California's, eugenics programs inspired the Holocaust. He even directly cites the United States as his model in Mein Kampf. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0306-bold-forced-sterilization-compensation-20150306-story.html
To learn more about this subject, check out these two books:
https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520285064 https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520271722
https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520285064 https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520271722
California universities were central to the eugenics movement.
Stanford Pres. David Starr Jordan originated the notion of "race & blood" in his white supremacist text "Blood of a Nation," declaring that "defect" qualities & poverty passed through blood. https://twitter.com/redpomgranat/status/1305679186565017601?s=20
Stanford Pres. David Starr Jordan originated the notion of "race & blood" in his white supremacist text "Blood of a Nation," declaring that "defect" qualities & poverty passed through blood. https://twitter.com/redpomgranat/status/1305679186565017601?s=20
