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We’ve now all heard the allegations about unwanted hysterectomies being performed on women in detention camps. A lot of people are skeptical because of some sense that “this is not who we are.”
Unfortunately, a country that sterilizes “undesirables” is EXACTLY what America is.
Unfortunately, a country that sterilizes “undesirables” is EXACTLY what America is.
America’s love affair with eugenics dates back to the early 1900s. As more immigrants came here, people became fixated on how to preserve “Anglo-Saxon superiority.”
The Carnegie institute released a paper detailing ways to keep America pure. Those points ranged from sterilization to lethal gas chambers -- in case you were wondering how the Nazis got that idea. ( https://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Eugenics-and-the-Nazis-the-California-2549771.php)
Not yet ready for gas chambers, in 1907 Indiana approved a “sterilization law” that allowed mental facilities to sterilize patients they deemed unfit. That could range from anyone from those of Mexican-American descent to homosexuals.
Of the 32 states that legalized eugenics, California led the way. In the first half of the century 20,000 people in CA were subjected to forced sterilization. 60,000 would be nationally. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/01/california-sterilization-records/511718/
In 1927, the Supreme Court voted 8 to 1 to uphold State’s right to sterilize undesirables. That decision was made after Buck vs. Bell.
Carrie Buck was sterilized because she was deemed “feebleminded.” In actual fact, while she’d grown up in poverty, she was doing well in school. ( https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/supreme-court-and-sterilization-carrie-buck).
There was probably very little wrong with her other than the fact that she was raped and impregnated by the nephew of her wealthy foster family, who would rather call her feebleminded and have her institutionalized than deal with the fallout.
Nonetheless, the Eugenics board declared that she should be sterilized as she was “from a shiftless, ignorant, and worthless class of people.” Not only was SHE sterilized, but so were her mother and sister.
Her sister had been told the operation was to have her appendix out. When she found out its real purpose she claimed, “I broke down and cried. My husband and me wanted children desperately. We were crazy about them.” ( https://fredericksburg.com/local/justice-at-last-for-victims-of-sterilization/article_014f72d4-8199-517c-8f4b-0722483aa876.html).
“Feebleminded” could be used as a catch-all to sterilize just about anyone Americans were uncomfortable with. 40 to 50% of Jews at Ellis Island were categorized as “feebleminded” (often because they did not speak English.) ( https://www.wvpublic.org/post/supreme-court-ruling-led-70000-forced-sterilizations#stream/0)
Women of color were especially likely to be subjected to this. By 1946, it was estimated that “6.5 percent of Puerto Rican women had been sterilized by government hospitals and private clinics.” By 1953, that number had jumped to nearly 17%. ( https://twu.edu/media/documents/history-government/Autonomy-Revoked--The-Forced-Sterilization-of-Women-of-Color-in-20th-Century-America.pdf)
Black women were disproportionately sterilized — in NC, for instance, of the 7,600 women sterilized, approximately 5,000 were black. ( http://www.msnbc.com/all/eugenic-sterilization-victims-belated-justice)
And, after the passage of the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act of 1970, over a six year period, physicians sterilized 25% of Native American women, often without their consent or understanding. ( https://time.com/5737080/native-american-sterilization-history/)
In the early 1970’s for instance, two Native American girls went to the hospital for appendectomies. While they were under anesthesia, the doctors sterilized them. ( https://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/book-excerpts/health-article/forced-sterilization/)
And look, while this became less widespread, it never REALLY ended. In 2014 it was found that in the past decade hundreds of tubal ligations had been done on women in prison. 39% were done without informed consent. ( https://www.revealnews.org/article/female-prison-inmates-sterilized-illegally-california-audit-confirms/)
So please, be outraged by the hysterectomies. We all should be. But the next time someone tells you it’s simply unbelievable that could happen in America, ask them why on earth they would think that.
