The History of Sterilization in the United States
A discussion on how sterilization targeted specific women of color and how it was based on the Eugenics movement.
“If you are sterilizing someone, you are saying, if not to them directly, ‘Your possible progeny are inassimilable, and we choose not to deal with that.” — William Deverell
Many women of color have been forcibly sterilized by the U.S. government for many years and the government has taken this piece of atrocious history and has tried to tuck it away in a little box. Forced sterilization is the process of permanently ending someone’s ability to reproduce without his/her consent. The U.S. has tried to hide that deep sickening part of our history from the world and its citizens. I don’t remember reading in my history books that the United States government intentionally funded programs to sterilize Black, Native American, and Latina women do you? But then again I don’t remember reading about minorities in my US history classes either. It’s crazy to me how women were going to the doctor’s office for routine medical procedures and had their right to bear children snatched away from them. Many of the women who did not know they were sterilized tried growing their families, but after having difficulties went to go find answers and that’s when they encountered the horrific truth. The United States government has used the excuse that they forcibly sterilized women in order to protect them and their bodies, but I know that’s not the real reason.
Take the “Mississippi appendectomies” as one example. During the 1950s in Mississipppi, women of color were being targeted at a teaching hospital. Medical residents performed 523 unnecessary hysterecectomies on Black women for practice without their informed consent! This sort of mistreatment became so widespread in the South that these operations came to be known as Mississippi appendectomies. First of all, no living patient male or female should be used for residents to practice surgical procedures on, that’s why residents are supplied with medical dummies and are allowed to practice on the newly dead if they received previous consent from the patient. You can tell that race was a main factor in there decision to choose which women to “practice on” because they didn’t sterilize any white patients at this hospital.
Our government is not only sterilizing women of color, but young children as well. The case of Relf v. Weinberger is case in point. Two African American sisters, Mary Alice and Minnie Relf were 14 and 12 years old when they got sterilized in Alabama. Their mother was illiterate and she had thought she was giving permission for her daughters to get birth control injections. In my opinion, I don’t think that girls should have to get permission from their parents to receive contraceptives because it’s their own body and they shouldn’t have to ask the government or anybody else including their parents. I like to point out that the consent should have been declined by the hospital since it required a signature and not an “X” with which the mother gave. These were the lengths of how far the government was willing to go to sterilize women of color.
The sterilization of women is still relevant today because it keeps happening. Our government is targeting other vulnerable populations as well, like inmates in California prisons. From 1997 to 2010, contracted doctors were paid $147,460 by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to perform these unconsented tubal ligations on female inmates from 2006 to 2010 without state approval. They mostly targeted women who were already pregant. While these women were in labor and were solely concentrated on getting their baby out, the doctors would have them sign their consent away while they were distracted. Many of the doctors like Dr. Heinrich, who performed unconsented tubal ligations haven’t been punished at all and are actually still practicing as a contracted physican for prisons, which just shows you how messed up our justice system is. Dr. Heinrich didn’t have his medical license taken away even though there was several testimonies against him. His class status and race make him untouchable in our corrupt legal system. He is White and could easily afford a good lawyer if need be with his substantial salary. Even it was illegal for doctors to ask for sterilization consent while they were in labor, like it is today, I don’t think it would have reduced the amount of tubal ligations like we would want to believe. They would just find another doctor willing to do the procedure or increase the monetary compensation since almost everyone can be bought with the right price. In order to make sure this doesn’t happen again, for starters we need more doctors whose race is either African American, Native American, Hispanic and they need to be females.
Sterilization laws were different for each state. But one similarity among these different state sterilization laws existed. These sterilization laws, were based on the Eugenics movement, specificially targeting genes that were considered “undesirable” and these undesirable genes came from certain groups in society such as minority groups, the poor, the mentally ill, and criminals. The government was basically practicing genocide by sterilizing women who were believed to be part of an “inferior” race in the U.S. population. Sir Francis Galton was one of the first start to the Eugenics movement and gained many supporters like Margaret Singer, who was the founder of Planned Parenthood.
An advocate for women’s reproductive rights who was also a vocal eugenics enthusiast, Margaret Sanger leaves a complicated legacy behind. Many individuals believe that Singer had supposedly built Planned Parenthood around poverty-stricken communities, where Hispanics and African Americans prominently lived, in order to prevent them from reproducing. Whatever her motives were, she was the first person to open a birth control center in the United States and have shaped the lives of many by educating them on sexual reproduction.
If someone chooses to use sterilization as a method of contraceptive, it should be free from coercion, violence, and discrimination. I hope that me sharing this knowledge will be useful to women of color who are interested in reproductive justice. By now being aware of our government’s history in relation to women’s reproductive rights, they can spread this truth to poor women, women of color, and immigrant women who’ve been marginalized in order to put a stop theses crime that are being committed.
