Not Fit to Breed? Forced Sterilization Is Not New In America.
By: Linda Caroll
Tags: Women, Feminism, History, Equality, Racism

On Monday, a whistle blower and former nurse at a Georgia ICE detention center accused a doctor of forcibly sterilizing immigrant women.

According to the whistle blower, the ICDC consistently used a particular gynecologist who almost always opted to remove all or part of the uterus of female detainee patients.

He has a nickname, that gynecologist.

They call him the uterus collector.

Omg, is America becoming fascist?

News outlets and bloggers are shocked, wondering aloud if America is becoming like the Nazis.

Surely, you jest.

America is not becoming like the Nazis. America inspired the Nazis.

I wish I was kidding. It makes me a little sick to say it.

But the truth doesn’t care what anyone thinks of it.

By the end of World War II, over 400,000 people had been forcibly sterilized under German Eugenics laws.

When the issue of forced sterilization was brought up at the Nuremberg trials, Nazis defended their actions and their eugenics laws by saying they had only taken inspiration from the United States.

Eugenics. Made in America

Although the practice of Eugenics and forced sterilization is associated with Nazi Germany and other oppressive regimes, it started in America.

It seems horrible, doesn’t it? Cutting open a woman’s gut and yanking out her uterus and Fallopian tubes. Like some twisted dystopian Atwood novel.

But no. It’s just business as usual in America.

During the U.S. colonization of Puerto Rico, over one-third of women were sterilized. Many were under age 30.

Eugenics wasn’t even legal in America. Yet

Indiana passed the world’s first eugenics sterilization law in 1907 and 31 other US states followed suit.

Eugenics. Born in America.

An excuse for racial extermination…

White elites with strong biases about who was “fit” and “unfit” embraced eugenics, believing American society would be improved by increased breeding of Anglo Saxons and Nordics, whom they assumed had high IQs.

Sound familiar? That’s what Hitler said, too.

America just said it first.

Anyone who didn’t fit the mold of racial perfection, which included most immigrants, Blacks, Indigenous people, poor whites and people with disabilities, became targets of eugenics programs.

Over to 70,000 Americans were forcibly sterilized under Eugenics laws that were originally declared as a way to eradicate “feeblemindedness,” but that really served as a means of racial extermination.

America’s Eugenics program, accepted by the Supreme Court, targeted Black, Native American, Latina, and Puerto Rican women for over a century.

They were deemed unfit to procreate because of “undesirable” traits that should be bred out of future generations.

You know. Like color.

“Undesirable,” of course, was a euphemism for immigrants and anyone who was not white and also happened to be poor and/or mentally ill.

Have you heard anyone use the word “undesirables” lately?

A phrase as American as apple pie.

In California, Latina women of Mexican descent, were sterilized at 59% higher rates than non-Latinas.

In North Carolina, the state performed surgeries on more than 7,600 people between the 1930s and 1970s. 65% were Black women

According to Rutgers historian Johanna Schoen, more than one-third of those sterilized were not even of legal age to buy a drink or vote. The youngest girl sterilized was only nine years old.

The Mississipi Appendectomy!

Forced sterilization of Black women was so common across the South that it was called a “Mississippi appendectomy” because doctors would tell women they needed to get their appendix out, but then sterilize them.

Wealthy white medical students were allowed to “practice” performing a hysterectomy during those Mississippi appendectomies.

Can you even imagine? The doctor you trust tells you that you need to have your appendix out and you wake up with your uterus gone?

In the 1970s, autonomy was for white women…

You might think it would have ended once the Nazis were tried for crimes against humanity and the Nuremberg trials hit global news.

You would be wrong. It did not end.

In the 1970’s, as Roe v. Wade hit the courts and the headlines and granted women bodily autonomy, up to 50% of Native American women who received medical care were forcibly sterilized by the United States government.

Also during the 70s, the Nixon administration increased Medicaid-funded sterilization of low-income Americans, primarily those of color.

The Last Forced Sterilization?

Most of the state Eugenics laws were repealed by the 1970s.

A Supreme Court ruling in the late 1970s said doctors had to fully inform patients of their rights and could not ask for consent for sterilization during childbirth. But the practice continued.

According to historians, the last forced sterilization in U.S. history was performed in Oregon, in 1981

Except, no.

Forced sterilization is still common for women who are incarcerated or otherwise detained. Like in the ICE center. But not just there.

Even though forced hysterectomies were officially banned in California in 1979, 1400 women in California prisons, primarily women of color, were given unwanted sterilizations between 1997 and 2010.

2010. That’s a decade ago.

A Legacy of Inequality…

America was profoundly shaped by the Eugenics Movement. It’s an integral part of the racial inequality that has always existed in America.

All forced sterilizations, regardless of time or place, both then and now — have one thing in common. They dehumanize a subset of the population deemed less worthy by those with privilege.

24 hours after the whistle blower report hit the news, 168 members of Congress sent a letter urging DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari to investigate the allegations.

Of course they did.

It’s an election year.

They’re demanding an urgent response and a briefing by September 25.

Of course they are.

It’s an election year.

On September 25, there will be a report. What there won’t be is change. Not unless enough voices demand it. Inequality will continue for as long as we continue to look the other way.