Aggregated News
A new report is highlighting forced sterilization laws across the U.S. and how the practice specifically affects disabled people, taking away their bodily autonomy.
The National Women’s Law Center released a report on forced sterilization of disabled people in the U.S. and how 31 states and Washington, D.C., allow the practice, through tubal ligation, also known as getting your tubes tied or a hysterectomy, a surgery that removes a women’s uterus.
The report argues that women with intellectual or developmental disabilities are sterilized more than nondisabled women and that when disabled women get sterilized, they are much younger than nondisabled women.
Black disabled women are more likely to be sterilized than white disabled women as well.
The group cites multiple reasons for why forced sterilization tends to happen more to disabled women and women of color, from being worried they do not have enough money to support a child to having difficulty getting birth control, and sometimes they are simply pressured into making the decision.
The report lists examples of what it considers to be forced sterilization, from not being told you were...
