One
of the topics which Blackwell brings up in talking about Triple Jeopardy is how women all around the world began to see
trends in how they were being oppressed that transcended the differences in
their lives (282). Through being able to see these forms of oppression, women
were able to come together to create spaces and take actions to avoid things
like forced sterilization, and enforce reproductive justice, etc.
I
think it was very interesting that Blackwell mentioned forced sterilization and
then immediately made a connection specifically towards women of color because
in doing so, there’s a recognition of the fact that reproductive issues are a
bigger problem among minority women regardless of location. Additionally,
Blackwell lists minorities which are known to have experienced encounters with these
reproductive rights issues. However, she refrains from including white women
which I thought was refreshing. Often times it seems as though white women include
themselves into the same kind of oppression minorities have experienced in
order make women "come together as one". However, the oppression white women face
is in no way equal to the oppression minority women have been exposed to and
the violation of reproductive rights is just one of the ways in which we can
see these differences.
Blackwell
didn’t entertain the idea of all women experiencing the same oppression because
when the US was testing contraceptive methods, they didn’t give them to upper class
white women, they traveled to Puerto Rico to give it to women who they believed
nobody cared for. I also really appreciate the fact that she made a specific
reference regarding her insight into Puerto Rican women who were unjustly taken
advantage of and essentially used as guinea pigs for the unethical testing of
birth control pills (282). In high school, I read an amazing book by Esmeralda
Santiago called When I was Puerto Rican in
which she talks about how doctors would visit her village and make the women
take birth control pills without entirely explaining to them what the pills did
or whether they were safe. Although there are cases in which women of all races
experienced complications arising from birth control, minorities have been largely used
as lab rats which Blackwell acknowledges. Although she didn’t address what Puerto
Rican women experienced in detail, I appreciate that she recognizes it and brings
light to a topic many people are not aware of. In doing so, she reiterates that
the violation of these reproductive issues happens close to home even for a country like the United States which people hold to such a high standard. Her inclusion
of minorities makes me feel that she has a very open understanding regarding
the fact that women of color are at a double disadvantage, not just for being
women, but for being minorities as well –which she actually mentions earlier in
the text when she talks about black women and their enslavement to their race and
sex (281).
Furthermore,
in countries like Mexico, the concept of experimenting on women with birth control
as well as sterilization is also a part of the country’s history. Indigenous
women have been consistently taken advantage of and treated as second-class
citizens in Mexico -and many other Latin American countries. In states like Chiapas, many of the indigenous women were also forcibly
sterilized and used to experiment on similarly to Puerto Rican women. Women
with disabilities in other countries have also been subject to forcible
sterilizations in order to keep disability rates low because of deeply rooted
ideologies of ableism.
https://books.google.com/books?id=B-MJW9RSamAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=when+i+was+puerto+rican&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiIxd-p6erYAhUEXq0KHeXbAIgQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=when%20i%20was%20puerto%20rican&f=false
Why do you
think that are there so many reoccurring instances of women being unethically
experimented on by pharmaceutical companies/government and yet nothing has been
done to protect them or their reproductive rights?
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