Eugenicists Never Retreat, They Just Regroup: Sterilization and Reproductive Oppression in Prisons
By Loretta Ross,
RH Reality Check
| 06. 12. 2014
Untitled Document
I was sterilized in 1976 when I was 23 years old. My paternalistic doctor visited me the day after la operación and assumed I would be relieved to not have the “burden” of using birth control or worrying about periods.
He was so wrong. I sued him, and the manufacturers of the Dalkon Shield that caused my sterilization. After winning a settlement that opened the door for thousands of women to initiate malpractice lawsuits against this defective intrauterine device (IUD), I naively thought we had seen the end of sterilization atrocities. After all, the first federal guidelines prohibiting sterilization abuse were also implemented in 1976. Not only should these guidelines have ended sterilization abuses, they should have ended the racist, sexist, and classist eugenical thinking my doctor shared that underlay such policies.
Unfortunately, that is not so, at least in California.
According to the prisoners’ rights advocacy group Justice Now, people in California women’s prisons have been illegally sterilized, nearly four decades after sterilization abuse guidelines were implemented at the state and the federal level. Justice Now’s...
Related Articles
By Eric Schmidt, TIME | 04.16.2024
Imagine a world where everything from plastics to concrete is produced from biomass. Personalized cell and gene therapies prevent pandemics and treat previously incurable genetic diseases. Meat is lab-grown; enhanced nutrient grains are climate-resistant. This is what the future could...
By Harold Brubaker, The Philadelphia Inquirer | 04.04.2024
Acompany started by University of Pennsylvania scientist Jim Wilson has received FDA approval to test a form of gene editing in infants for the first time in the United States, the company said Thursday.
The Plymouth Meeting company, iECURE, is...
By Carey Gillan, UnSpun | 03.18.2024
A Mexican standoff with the United States turned into a Mexican smack-down this month with the release of Mexico’s formal rebuttal to US efforts to overturn limits Mexico has ordered on the use of genetically modified (GM) corn and the...
By Billy Perrigo, TIME | 03.11.2024
The U.S. government must move “quickly and decisively” to avert substantial national security risks stemming from artificial intelligence (AI) which could, in the worst case, cause an “extinction-level threat to the human species,” says a report commissioned by the U.S...