Reliving Our Eugenics Past: Decades of Sterilization, 'Undesirables,' 'Mississippi Appendectomies'
Last edited Sat Dec 4, 2021, 06:57 PM - Edit history (2)
- In 1961, civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer received a hysterectomy by a white doctor without her consent while undergoing surgery to remove a uterine tumor. Forced sterilization of Black women was so widespread it was dubbed a “Mississippi appendectomy.” https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/fannie-lou-hamer
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- 'Mississippi Appendectomies: Reliving Our Pro-Eugenics Past.' Ms. Magazine,*2020*, By Jessica Pearce, OBGYN. Recent accusations brought forth by immigrant detainees bring back shadows of America’s pro-eugenic history. Excerpts, Ed.:
Amy Coney Barrett’s SC nomination and what her confirmation could mean for reproductive rights has many women raising their voices & fearful of not being able to have control over their own reproductive health. A whistleblower complaint described women being coerced into having unnecessary surgeries, including hysterectomies, without their knowledge & consent at a GA detention center; 19 more women say they were subject to medical abuse while detained there. These allegations are shocking but unfortunately, not surprising given the amount of human rights violations that have been occurring in the last few years. The idea that an improved human race could be built by encouraging healthy and intelligent people to reproduce more frequently is the core of the idea of eugenics. While we commonly associate that term with the atrocities in Nazi Germany leading up to WWII, the birth of eugenics started in America. And there is no better time to discuss the history of coerced sterilization in the U.S.
For over 70 years, sterilization was used not only to control the population phenotype of America but to also control who was deemed fit enough to care for future generations. The science and implementation of these ideas are credited to a man named Charles Davenport. Davenport applied basic principles of genetics known at the time and applied it to humans in an effort to prove his theory that undesirable traits such as criminality, poverty, promiscuity and feeble-mindedness were genetically inherited. If he could limit the reproduction of these “undesirable” traits by sterilizing those who exhibited them, he theorized, it would be a benefit for the economic and social strains that the country was experiencing in the early 1900s. After securing financial support from several well known financial moguls of the decade including the Rockefeller and Carnegie families, Davenport successfully launched a campaign based on public health concerns to limit the reproduction of those with traits deemed undesirable.
While today we know the science behind eugenics is flawed, Americans in Davenport’s era considered it a positive idea as it provided citizens with the false belief that they were acting in the best interest of the country. Even the Supreme Court gave weight to coerced sterilization with its 1927 ruling in Buck v. Bell, where the sterilization of a 17-year-old with mental issues was upheld after she became pregnant as a result of rape. This ruling was the fuel that led to over 60,000 involuntary sterilizations in the U.S. from the early 1900s-1970s. The atrocities committed in Germany against the Jewish people may have had some inspiration in American laws and policies. The Supreme Court ruling of Buck v. Bell was even used by defense lawyers during the Nuremberg trials to show the hypocrisy of trying to criminalize sterilization in Germany that was no different than that which was occurring in the U.S.
- FIXED TO FAIL, Buck v. Bell, 1927; More. (4 mins). Sterilizations & hysterectomies of women viewed as unfit and undesirable. 20th C. Eugenics movement, women & some men targeted: 'poor, shiftless whites' like Carrie Buck in Va.; black women, incl. Fannie Lou Hamer of Miss.; imprisoned women in Calif. Oliver Wendell Homes, Supreme Court Justice & many others supported Eugenics pseudoscience. - Read more about Carrie Buck's story: http://exhibits.hsl.virginia.edu/eugenics/3-buckvbell/
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While support for eugenics based involuntary sterilization significantly decreased in the U.S. after WWII, it did not disappear, but morphed with careful planning, huge financial supporters, and growing racial tensions in the country. The formation of Medicaid in the 1960s allowed further widespread use of involuntary sterilization in more non-discrete ways; many institutions saw an opportunity to benefit financially from doing the procedures. In the south, the high number of hysterectomies and sterilizations were referred to as “Mississippi appendectomies.” Compared to the 1930s and ’40s, where most sterilization occurred on institutionalized women, over 70% of sterilizations in the 60s and 70s were on non-institutionalized women. Informed consent and full disclosure were not at the forefront of many of these conversations.
The first sterilization law was accepted in 1907 in Indiana. A total of 31 states had laws for forced sterilization, up until 1978.
In 2013, a report found that 148 female prisoners in California were sterilized between 2006-2010 without proper consent.
In 2015, a Nashville District attorney was fired after it was revealed he had sterilization requirements as part of his plea deals.
In fact, the 1927 Buck vs Bell case has never officially been overturned...
More,
https://msmagazine.com/2020/10/28/ice-immigration-mississippi-appendectomies-usa-eugenics-forced-coerced-sterilization/
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* Also: 'Mississippi Appendectomy: The decades long practice of sterilizing poor black women,' The Black Detour, Feb. 25, 2019.
https://theblackdetour.com/mississippi-appendectomy-the-decades-long-practice-of-sterilizing-poor-black-women/
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Last edited Sat Dec 4, 2021, 08:44 PM - Edit history (2)
a couple of years ago with a segment on Ann Cooper Hewitt. I posted it here several times.
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- Preparatory to their filing a $500,000 damage suit against the girl's mother, Mrs. Maryon Hewitt McCarter, two California physicians, and a psychiatrist, Miss Ann Cooper Hewitt, (right), and her attorney, Russel P. Tyler, are shown making final depositions. The charges claimed her mother and the doctors conspired to perform an operation rendering her sterile.
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- Salon: 'Eugenics, racism and the forced sterilization of heiress Ann Cooper Hewitt.' White people can be collateral victims of white supremacy, as this notorious 1936 case over an inheritance shows. April 20, 2021.
In January 1936, San Francisco heiress Ann Cooper Hewitt shocked the nation when she claimed that, in order to deprive her of her inheritance, her mother, Maryon, had her declared "feebleminded" and then sterilized without her knowledge. Ann explained that her father, legendary inventor Peter Cooper Hewitt, had bequeathed two-thirds of his $4 million dollar estate to her and one-third to her mother, but his will provided that her share went to Maryon if she died childless.
Knowing this, and presuming she would outlive her daughter, who had bronchial trouble, Maryon had taken steps to see that Ann never became a mother. A mere months before Ann's 21st birthday, she conspired with two doctors to have Ann's fallopian tubes removed during a scheduled appendectomy. In addition to suing her mother for half a million dollars, Ann demanded a full accounting of her mother's spending. She claimed Maryon had squandered much of her trust fund at gambling resorts across the world...
https://www.salon.com/2021/04/20/eugenics-racism-and-the-forced-sterilization-of-heiress-ann-cooper-hewitt/
