When Medicine is Violent: The Harmful Legacy of Eugenics and Medical Racism
TW: eugenics, reproductive violence, medical abuse, human rights abuse
This past week, as news broke about mass hysterectomies being performed on women held in a private ICE detention facility in Georgia, I felt many things. Disgust. Rage. Grief. Horror.
One thing that I did not feel was disbelief.
Not a single part of me felt skeptical that something like this could be happening, because I know that this type of brutality against women, and particularly women of color, is not new. Black and Brown bodies have been both controlled and abused by the state for many generations in the name of advancing science and “protecting” society, and all of it is simply vile. It is now happening in conjunction with the mass criminalization and detention of immigrants.
If you are unfamiliar with this history of scientific racism, medical violence, and eugenics, it is horrific. And wide-ranging.
Here are just a few examples of medical racism and eugenics in our recent history (the last century) that you might not know about but should:
1) State- based Eugenics Laws in the 20th Century
Though this history is largely unknown, compulsory programs estimate that more than 60,000 individuals in over 30 states were sterilized under state mandates throughout the 20th century, and the number is likely much higher. As early as 1907, the United States had instituted public policy in states such as Indiana (“Law 116”) that the government had the right “to sterilize unwilling and unwitting people.” Other laws that were similar to Law 116 soon passed in 30 states. These policies listed the “insane,” the “feeble-minded,” the “dependent,” and the “diseased” as incapable of regulating their own reproductive abilities, therefore justifying government-forced sterilizations.
Both men and women were survivors of sterilization, yet women of color have always been disproportionately impacted by these efforts. For example, Latina women in Puerto Rico, New York City, and California were specifically targeted by the government for sterilization throughout the 20th century. A 1965 survey of Puerto Rican residents found that about one-third of all Puerto Rican mothers, ages 20–49, were sterilized. To put this figure in context, Puerto Rican women of childbearing age in the 1960s were more than 10 times more likely to be sterilized than women from the United States. Similarly, eugenics programs in California were driven by both Anti-Mexican and Anti-Asian sentiments sterilized over 20,000 people between the 1909 and 1979. Nazi Germany even consulted with California’s eugenics leaders in the 1930s to learn from their model!
Furthermore, as many as 25% of Native American women between 15–44 years old were sterilized by the 1970s. One famous story involved two Cheyenne girls in Montana who entered an IHS hospital in the 1970s on two separate occasions, for emergency appendectomies. While sedated, the physicians sterilized both girls, without consent from the patients themselves, nor from their parents.
Black women have also historically been survivors of sterilization abuse, as forms of population control and eugenics. For example, In North Carolina, 65 percent of sterilization procedures were performed on black women, even though only 25 percent of the state’s female population is black. The state of Mississippi was also known for the phenomenon deemed the “Mississippi Appendectomy,” (a term coined by Fannie Lou Hamer) — the involuntary sterilization of poor, black, women because they were deemed unfit to reproduce.
All of these movements combined medical abuse and legal policy with racism, classism, sexism, and ableism, to strip thousands of women of their reproductive rights.
To learn more about your state’s history with eugenics, check this site.
2) Medical Experimentation
The abuse and violence committed against especially Black bodies have also come in the form of forced medical testing and experimentation. There are many different examples of this, such as the Tuskegee Experiment, which led to the death of over 100 Black men who were unknowingly used as testing subjects for syphilis treatment, or the robbing of graves of deceased African Americans, to use their bodies as cadavers for medical experiments and dissection. Black bodies have always been treated as both property for white possession, as well as less valuable than white bodies. And Black women’s bodies bear a double burden.
For example, Dr. Marion Sims was a white doctor known for performing antebellum medical research on enslaved Black women without their consent. While he is deemed by some as the “father of modern gynecology,” he is known to have developed his surgical techniques by operating, without anesthesia, on enslaved black women. This practice was uncontroversial at the time, widely accepted by the medical field, and Sims claimed that these black women were “willing,” and they had no better option for getting treatment than to subject their bodies to experimentation.
Henrietta Lacks is another example of how the medical community has exploited Black bodies without consent or even compensation. After her death, samples of her cells were discovered by researchers to have the capacity to survive and reproduce, and have since been widely used for biological research. Her cells not only underpin much of modern medicine, but have been used in the fields of cancer, immunology, infectious disease, an even in researching a vaccine for covid-19. They have even been used for research that has been patented and profited off of. Yet her family was never asked for consent, her genome was publicly published without approval, and her family has never received compensation for the use of her cells.
The violation and exploitation of Black bodies for the purpose of medical research and experimentation is a reminder of the power that the White community has always wielded.
3) Sterilization of women in CA Prisons
While California lawmakers officially banned forced sterilization laws in 1979, a report from the Center of Investigative Reporting discovered in 2013 revealed that women in California’s state prison system had been forcibly sterilized by the Department of Corrections between 2006 to 2010 without required state approvals or full consent. Government documents indicate that at least 250 people — disproportionately women of color and non-native English speakers — experienced sterilizations that were performed without consent or knowledge, often during labor an delivery or other abdominal surgeries. However, most investigative journalists believe this number is dramatically underestimated.
Survivors and activists in California are pushing for reparations from the state, joining states like North Carolina which formally apologized for a history of forced sterilization and offered compensation to survivors. A documentary film, Belly of the Beast, was recently made to share the stories of women who had been impacted by these forced sterilizations.
As we see history potentially repeating itself, we must be vigilant to fight violence in all forms, and continue to clearly name what is happening. Forced sterilization is clearly a part of the movement of genocide. Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg details 5 stages of destruction which was highlighted in the documentary film, “The House I Live in.”
These 5 stages are:
- Identification– When a group of people is identified as the cause of problems in a society and begin to be seen as bad, evil, or worthless by others
- Ostracism– Judgments lead to actions which make it harder for these people to survive. People lose their homes and are often forced into ghettos where they are physically isolated and separated from the rest of society
- Confiscation– People lose their rights, their civil liberties. Laws change so it becomes easier for their rights and property to be taken away
- Concentration– The State begins to concentrate undesirables into facilities such as prisons and camps. People lose their rights, their labor is exploited, they can’t vote, and often suffer emotionally and mentally.
- Annihilation– Might be indirect- by withholding medical care, food, or further births. Or it may be direct, where death is inflicted and people are deliberately killed.
Withholding the chance of future births for any particular community is a form of annihilation, representing one of the final steps in genocide.
Let us stay vigilant to name and note the ways that thousands of migrants, are now being identified as criminals, rounded up in detention centers, denied civil liberties and legal recourse, restricted from accessing crucial medical resources, being exposed to covid-19, and even now being forcibly sterilized. This is simply not okay. The continued demonization of migrants, erasure of their protections, creation of bans and barriers, and mistreatment of women, children, and families simply because of their country of origin deserves both our outrage and our attention.
Pray.
Lament.
Speak up.
Contact your elected reps.
Fight to defund and abolish ICE.
Demand reparations for survivors of state-sanctioned sterilizations.
Support local organizations advocating for immigrant justice and immigrant rights.
And most importantly, VOTE.
Lord, have mercy on us all.
