Undivided Rights talked about many issues that have followed
women of color but I think the most hurtful thing affecting their bodies were
sterilization abuse. In chapter 3 we see this discrimination aimed towards
people of color and only them who are true victims of this monstrosity.
The reason why I think sterilization abuse was more hurtful
to these women was because it ruins the lives of these women in a very personal
way. In the personal aspect I’m talking about how these women of color were
taken away the opportunity to form a family if they wished to. Thy were taken
away the possibility to keep a child they wanted to have and in some cases
there were women who were forced already pregnant to have an abortion and then
sterilized. It’s taking away a life and that brings me to the second reason why
it was so hurtful.
The second reason is that it was basically done to commit genocide.
When African Americans were still in slavery, they were abused and were having
more children in order to serve as slaves as well. When slavery ended in 1865
and so forth that was when these corrupt people would take advantage of these
women and sterilize them. In some cases as mentioned in the reading were women
going to jail for one thing and as punishment would sterilize them not even
making them aware of it at the time. That is also why I think it was necessary
for organizations such as National Black Women’s Health Project (NBWHP) to
emerge and why others followed.
Something shocking to me was that these forced sterilizations
did happen many years ago and by law ended in the 70’s but just 8 years ago
there was a case that came up because women in a prison in California were
being sterilized without their permissions. There were about 150 female inmates
from 2006-2010 sterilized without required state approvals and so many of these
women didn’t want to speak about it because they were traumatized and others
even felt shame. One woman explained how she felt like she lost her women hood
and it affected her for such a long time. This abuse hurts a woman both physically
and mentally and is not fair.
Since sterilization abuse happened in recent years in a
California prison, how can we be sure it won’t happen again?
Jocelyn,
ReplyDeleteIn Undivided Rights, they mention that women who spoke other languages were given forms in English to unknowingly sign away their bodies. I could imagine they felt exactly how you described in your first paragraph. Also, in my post I did something similar to you, I was interested in past events listed in the reading, but I was also able to bring up a recent example, China's attempt at population control for decades. Because of this, I sort of also questioned the same thing as you.