Forced Sterilization in America: It Inspired the Nazis and Went on Longer
The very first nation to take an official and organized approach to eugenics, involving forced sterilization of "undesirables," was the United States of America. Starting with Michigan in 1897, forced sterilization in the US lasted into the 1960's and was given Supreme Court approval in Buck v. Bell in 1927. More than 60,000 people considered undesirable, including the mentally ill, the "promiscuous," the poor, Native Americans and the physically disabled, were compulsorily sterilized under official policy in the United States. The very last state-sanctioned, forced sterilization program in the US was in Oregon, only ending in 1981.
According to the anthropological study of Judaism called Unsettled (reviewed here), the Nazi eugenics program in 1930's and 1940's Germany was inspired by and specifically modeled on America's eugenics program. Our shame was their inspiration.
America is certainly not alone in having as part of its history the forced sterilization of citizens based on junk science, but our programs were among the earliest and lasted the longest, though Nazi Germany easily surpassed us in terms of both numbers and enthusiasm.
Each forces sterilization has a face and a story going with it, and thanks to BBC news one woman is going very public regarding her secret and forced sterilization in the 1960's by official US policy...or, more specifically, official North Carolina policy.
(photo and below quotes from the BBC article)
"When I was 13, I was raped. I had my beautiful son and when they cut me open, I had a caesarean, they sterilised me at the same time," she said.
"I didn't know anything about it until I was 19. I got married and tried to have a child. The doctor told me I had been butchered."
That is what happened in America to Elaine Riddick. Social workers would make reports to unelected Eugenics Boards who could then decide, without the knowledge of the patient, to sterilize an American citizen. This was happening during both Democratic and Republican presidencies, including the time when JFK and Lyndon Johnson were promoting civil rights and the war on poverty. This was happening while feminism was getting its start and the Beatles were performing to screaming crowds.
The social worker's reasoning for secretly referring Elaine Riddick, victim of rape, to the Eugenics Board? Promiscuity.
Elaine Riddick's form refers to "community reports that she was 'running around' late at night" and her "promisicuity" [sic] and her "inability to control herself" constituted grounds for sterilisation...
More than 60% of those sterilized were black women and girls like Elaine Riddick.
Records show that in North Carolina out of the 7,000 sterilisations less than 500 took place with the clear consent of the patient...
Words fail me. This is what happened in America. And I notice that it is BBC covering it, not American news media.
Post to TwitterYIKES!!!
Jesus! I know doctors who were sued because they developed a tissue culture line from a patient's cancer cells (after saving her life from the cancer) yet a doctor can sterilize a woman WITHOUT HER CONSENT.
Wish I had time to follow this up, but I am way too busy for the next month or so. But it is astonishing the crap that still goes on.
And for the record, the C-section rate in the US is anomolously high. This is largely due to the structure of our medical system where the primary goal is to avoid lawsuits, not give proper treatment. Yet the outcome from C-section on average (for both mother and child) is the same or worse than for vaginal birth. Don't get me wrong...there are cases where a C-section most certainly is necessary. But the majority of cases in the US do not fall into that category,
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sterilization article
Read your blog (you know me from IND, I gave you and Hal a ride a few months ago) and wish to comment with respect to your forced sterilization article. Wish it did end in the 1960's as you indicate, but sadly it is alive and well in appropriately enough North Carolina. Met someone online in one of my groups who had four children by c-section, she was not allowed to try a vaginal birth due to hospital policy despite being capable of doing so (as are 80% of c women). Discovered after her fourth child that despite trying with her second husband for several years she could not get pregnant. Only when she was examined by an ob/gyn when she relocated to another state did she discover that her tubes had been tied. When confronted, her doctor told her that it was his and others policy to not allow a woman who had four children by c-section to have anymore, and that he tied her tubes without her consent. Incredible, but there was nothing she could do about it. Apparently the law down there protects the doctors and hospitals so long as they can show that it was in the patients best interest!!!!