When America Sterilized Women of Color

Forcible sterilizations of black women in the South were so frequent in the 1960s, civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer nicknamed them Mississippi appendectomies. Cristen and Caroline chart the disturbing American practice of nonconsensually sterilizing women of color and the eugenics movement that started it.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, a host of the new House
Stuff Works Now podcast. Every week, I'll be bringing you
three stories from our team about the weird and wondrous
developments we've seen in science, technology, and culture. Fresh episodes
will be out every Monday on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music,
and everywhere else that find podcasts are found. Welcome to

(00:25):
Stuff Mob Never Told You from House touff Works dot com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline
and Caroline. We have talked about reproductive rights on the
podcast so many times. We devoted a two part podcast

(00:45):
to the history of abortion in the United States. But
there is an overlooked chapter in our reproductive rights history
and also the reproductive rights fights, um that continue today.
And that's the issue of forced sterilization. Yeah, I mean

(01:05):
overlooked to the point of this was still happening just
a few years ago. Oh yeah, um so fact bomb listeners,
at least sixty thousand people from coast to coast in
the US were legally legally in all caps sterilized in

(01:25):
the twentieth century, and ultimately thirty two states past compulsory
eugenics laws, mostly affecting people of color, people disabilities, poor people, criminals,
and the mentally ill. Yeah. In the nineties hundreds of
young men and women in California alone were sterilized on

(01:48):
the basis of schizophrenia, epilepsy, manic depression, and quote feeble mindedness.
Even masturbation or pregnancy outside of marriage were considered immoral nymphomaniacal,
thus possibly requiring sterilization. Yeah, and we're going to see
that issue of pregnancy outside of marriage as a basis

(02:09):
for sterilization really ramp up after World War Two, which
is horribly ironic considering that we refer to that as
the baby boom. Uh. Yeah, I mean, but that gets
it and it will, trust me, we'll get into this.
But that gets at the root of who is producing
babies in the quote appropriate way or producing quote appropriate babies.

(02:33):
And we are going to focus in this episode, by
the way, on the for sterilization or compulsory sterilization as
it's also termed, of women of color. Um, We're not
going to focus as much on the sterilization of people
with disabilities of both physical disabilities and mental disabilities, because
that was something that we talked about more in our

(02:54):
episode on Disability and sexuality, um so getting act to
how the sterilization happened. It went down via vasectomy, hysterectomy,
sal pingectomys, which is the removal of fallopian tubes, and
also castration. And it certainly wasn't limited to the US,

(03:17):
although we're mostly focusing on the US and Puerto Rico today. Uh,
this also happened in Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Japan, Iceland, India, Finland,
all over the country. As Bell Bogs writes in For
the Public Good, the Shameful history of for sterilization in
the US, it was hardly limited to this country. And
I want to say I haven't read a ton about it,

(03:39):
but that it has been a recent issue too in Uzbekistan.
And compulsory serialization is absolutely a reproductive justice issue, and
absolutely one that white second wave feminist both knowingly and
unknowing overlooked. In their campaign for legalized abortion, they put

(04:04):
all of their effort into that aspect of reproductive rights,
whereas as this was happening, women of color in the
United States had to fight for the right to bear
children and raise families as they saw fit, rather than
abortion access not to say that abortion access is something

(04:25):
that only white women would want, but it speaks to
a very narrow definition of reproductive rights that we have had. Yeah,
And as to Mark Craft Stoleer, the director of the
Women in Prison Project at the Correctional Association of New York,
told the Center for Investigative Reporting, these issues are just
as important as the brutal Republican attack on reproductive rights

(04:48):
and their tolerance and perpetuation of rape culture. And and
that's something that echoes what Laura Heimanez, the executive director
of California, Latina's for Reproductive Justice, told Salon. She says
that mainstream feminism has really been defined by issues of
abortion and contraceptive access and the right not to have children.

(05:10):
Whereas she says, women of color quote have had to
fight for our right to have children consistently, sterilization abuse
being just one example of this struggle. And I think,
I mean it was it was eye opening enough reading
all of these sources, these articles, these studies into this issue,
and it was horrifying enough to see how it has

(05:32):
continued into the twenty one century. But he was also
so eye opening to read these accounts from women of
color saying like, yes, let's fight for reproductive rights and justice,
but that doesn't stop at abortion. And my response to
that was, holy crap, of course it doesn't. Of course
it doesn't. And so I think telling this story is

(05:55):
so critical for all of those reasons. And it's also
foundational were intersectional feminism today because A if we're not
aware of serialization abuse and this legacy, then we're not
going to know to even keep an eye out for
it's still happening today, and be that definition of reproductive

(06:18):
rights will remain so narrow. And that's also why, for instance,
the term reproductive justice was even coined, because reproductive rights
had become so almost co opted by a I mean,
I don't mean this in a conspiratorial way, but by
a white middle class agenda, you know that only experience this,

(06:40):
this one lack of access, rather than this other form
of abuse perpetrated on women of color. Um. So let's
get into the history of this, because here's the thing.
Sterilization abuse is something that was going on in the

(07:01):
sense of the way we think about illegal abortion of
like back alley abortions, very hush hush um. This wasn't
hush hush at all. The US government was one hundred
percent complicit in this. And the story starts in nineteen
o seven. Yeah, that's when Indiana passed the nation's first
eugenics law, legalizing compulsory sterilization for quote unwilling and unwitting people,

(07:27):
and pretty soon after, Washington State and California followed suit
within the next two years, and the official classifications UH
listed for people who were part of this program included
feeble minded, dependent, diseased. Also, welfare recipients with children were
highly vulnerable. Because there's this idea, UH that really stems

(07:51):
from the progressive era of poverty being a character flaw
rather than a result of I don't know, something like
systemic race is um or you know, failing social program,
the vestiges of slavery. Yeah, I don't know, just little
things like that. And so the idea, which still persists

(08:14):
today of women who are quote in the system having
children at all or having more children was something that
the government just did not want to tolerate. And Dorothy Roberts,
who wrote the book Killing the Black Body, said about
this forced sterilization has always targeted people considered the least

(08:36):
valuable in our society. In the early twentieth century, that
meant white immigrants. By the mid twentieth century that meant
poor women, Black and Puerto Rican women, and other women
of color whose bodies were not seen as fit to
be protected by the state. And spoiler alert for later
in the episode, in contemporary context, that also includes the

(09:00):
population the massive population of incarcerated women as well. So again,
I mean, just keep keep in mind this hierarchy that
we have erected, even within quote unquote mainstream feminism, of
the needs and experiences of white women as it relates

(09:21):
to reproductive rights at the top, Yeah, exactly, And interestingly,
until the nineteen thirties, men were actually the majority of
the sterilized victims or survivors, and then it wasn't until
then the attention shifted dramatically and almost exclusively to women.
So this shift to women was largely due to mounting

(09:44):
concerns over quote unquote unfit mothers, welfare dependency, and population control.
And this is when Margaret Sanger and the beginnings of
planned parenthood and uh, the eugenics movement all start to
merge together. Because Sanger, as we discussed in part two

(10:05):
of our episodes on abortion, Margaret singer absolutely capitalized on
eugenics mania happening at the time to get attention and
funding to plan parenthood, saying like, oh, well, you know,
we have all these these unfit mothers are going to
be a real drain on the system, so you know,

(10:27):
maybe we should give them some kind of She wasn't
pro abortion, um, but she was like, maybe we should
give them some kind of contraceptive. I don't know, yeah,
And and we did touch in that episode on the
idea that was absolutely held at the time in the
nineties sixties, particularly by Black power groups, that this was

(10:50):
race genocide and that the government, especially when it came
to contraception and family planning clinics, it couldn't be trusted.
And from a modern perspective of especially a modern perspective,
if you don't know about these histories, you look back
and you think, well, it's ridiculous. These clinics were just
there to provide contraception. They were there to help you
plan a family or not plan a family. Um. But

(11:13):
when you look at it in the context of no,
literally a huge and significant portion of women of color
were forcibly sterilized in this country, all of a sudden,
you realize, oh, okay, this was a legitimate concern, and
I think that that's left out of so many narratives
about reproductive rights well and also understandable suspicion, as we

(11:35):
touched on in that episode as well, of those clinics
popping up in poor neighborhoods, and usually poor neighborhoods predominated
by families of color. Exactly. But if we go back
to the progressive era where in you know, the nineteen
twenties and thirties, the way that these forceful sterilizations would

(11:56):
go down, we're often through lies so um. As Dorothy Roberts,
author of Killing the Black Body, pointed out, you know,
the first targets, so to speak, were often immigrant women.
So a lot of times these women would be told
that listen, if you don't allow us to essentially like

(12:18):
give you a hysterectomy or remove your fallopian tubes, then
we are going to yank your immigration rights. You're gonna
lose your housing, your government benefits, um, and we might
also take away the kids you already have. And not
to mention that a lot of women were led to
believe they were intentionally mislad, I should say that these Uh,

(12:42):
these surgeries were reversible. Um. That's actually so the euphemism
getting your tubes tied um was very misleading because it
was like, oh, well, if you it's like tying a shoelace.
If you can tie them, then you can certainly untie them.
I picture to balloon, but yeah, shoelace will work. Um.
And there were also issues, I mean, as you can
imagine with language barriers if people were recent arrivals to

(13:05):
this country and they didn't speak or read the language.
The government was able to capitalize on this and get
people to sign off on things that they for sure
did not fully understand. And issues too of outright illiteracy,
which will come up again later in the episode, particularly
among um, poorer, more remote communities that would not have had,

(13:25):
you know, access to education. And typically these sterilizations were
performed after c sections, which gave these doctors another quote
unquote justification saying, you know what, they already have a
number of children. If they undergo any more c sections,

(13:46):
it's going to cause a lot of physical harm because
there's so much tissue. So we have to sterilize these
women and we're just gonna, you know, while we're in there,
let's just we'll just take care of it. Then, no
need to really talk about it, just do it. And
I mean, again, this was a formalized system. This was
not a back alley situation. Some states like North Carolina

(14:09):
established formal eugenic sports to keep a lookout for candidates
victims for the quote a sexualization process. People who were
targeted had low i q s, exhibited quote abnormal behavior,
or they had a presumed risk of promiscuity, criminality, or

(14:29):
social dependency. Again, those last items, like, you're not looking
at this as part of a systemic problem. You're just
looking at this as like it's the fault of the
individual all the time. Well, I mean this was a
progressive air. I mean you have like Teddy Roosevelt and
all of these like leading men being like, well, we're

(14:50):
you know, we have American exceptionalism, and we're just going
to build the best, white, the best and whitest country
that we can. So we're going to breed out all
of these ab normalities. And uh. In Bell Boggs's piece
for the New New South that we found via long Reads,
which is such a fantastic resource and also a fantastic podcast,

(15:10):
shout out um in her peace focusing on sterilization that
went down in North Carolina. One of the people that
she talked to, one of the men she talked to
who exhibited that quote unquote abnormal behavior. I mean, there
was some truancy involved, but it really sounds like today
these kids would just be diagnosed with a d D.

(15:32):
I mean, that's what we're that's the level that we're
talking about about normal behavior. Low bar. I mean, it's
not like the bar for promiscuity was like at about
fifty partners will cut you off and sterilize you. It
was like, I mean again, layers of assumptions about women
and their sexuality, especially women of color being hyper sexualized
in the popular mentality, like the way that people viewed

(15:55):
women of color well, and even the class issue too,
because a lot of you know, you do have white
women also being sterilized, but it's not rich white women.
You wouldn't have like a wealthy young man with a
d D like behaviors who would be sterilized. Certainly not.
This was something that was also inextricably linked with poverty.

(16:17):
So if we do, for instance, look at North Carolina
from nine to the nineteen seventies, the state serialized at
least seventy undred people, sixty percent of whom were black women,
even though black women composed just twenty of the state population.
But Californians listening, I know, we have a lot of

(16:40):
fans in San Francisco shout out to l A. Hello,
you are living in America's sterilization capital. Yeah. From nineteen
o nine to nineteen sixty four, twenty thousand women and
men were non consensually sterilized in that state. And according
to a lot of historians, Nazi leaders consulted California's eugenics

(17:04):
leaders in the nineteen thirties leading up to their own
program of eliminating populations that they considered undesirable. Yeah. Yeah,
I mean that's that's another layer of horror to all
of this, is that, to repeat what you just said,
the Nazis studied the US to then apply to the

(17:26):
system that would then lead to concentration camps. Yeah, I
mean it was considered the supporters of eugenics and force
sterilization considered it to be a social benefit because if
you eliminate and breed out, so to speak, these undesirables,
you'll end up saving the states some money. Do you
want have to pay out as much welfare or fund

(17:48):
as many relief programs California, for instance, to find for
sterilization as a prophylactic measure to protect public health taxpayer
money and reduce the quote unfit population. And these eugenics
boards and organizations had plenty of cash to spend on

(18:09):
propaganda such as UH. In the nineteen thirties, there was
this group, the Human Betterment Foundation, which sounds also sketchy,
So it put out this poster listing the quote unquote
effects of sterilization, being like, hey, guys, sterilization is great.
I mean, like, we don't need to worry about this

(18:29):
at all. And at the top of the list it
said one effect only, it prevents parenthood. And then lower
down the list it says it's a protection, not a punishment.
Therefore it carries no stigma or humiliation. Yeah, way to
tell us how to feel, posters. Thanks a lot. Well,
so how did this happen? Where did this even come from?

(18:50):
How did this get started? Well, first of all, this
whole selective breeding thing was not a new idea. When
we look at history, babies who were born with physical
deformities in ancient Greece were killed at birth, and Plato
thought that quote the best of either sex should be
united with the best as often as possible. So like

(19:12):
the way that you would bread some prize, show dogs
or something. Can you imagine going on a date with Plato?
God play do yes Plato? No? By Felicia not so much.
But I mean again, like this gets to the environment
and the culture and climate of the progressive era and

(19:35):
their you know, public health activism. All of a sudden,
you've got this conviction that science can solve everything, including
our social problems. But if we look at who came
up with this whole eugenics idea to the point of
coining the term eugenics, it was a dude named Francis Galton,

(19:56):
and Francis was the cousin of one All's Darwin. He
was a British gent and he was a total child prodigy.
Side note. I was reading about Galton in Bell Boggs's
piece and the kid was like writing incredible letters at
four um, which was astounding um. But he was really

(20:19):
excited when all cousin Chucks The Descent of Man was published,
because it really supported the development of his theory that
you could positively and negatively breed in or breed out traits,
including poverty. So to positively breede that would be kind
of the Plato school of thought of like Muss and

(20:40):
only the bus should have sex with the bus. That's
how you get hemophilia. Yes, yes, I guess they really
didn't think much about in breeding and family shrubs as
opposed to tree uh. Negative breeding would involve sterilization. Essentially,
when you endpoint those quote unquote abnormal or unfit people

(21:04):
in your population, make sure they cannot have babies. And
so often, Caroline reading about these eugenics sentiments just reminds
me of so many just off handed statements that you
see on social media in response to you know, news
stories about people acting foolish, you're doing something terrible, and

(21:26):
you have you know that one person or twelve people
on Facebook being like and that's you know, people like
that shouldn't be allowed to have babies. It's like, oh,
you don't know what you're talking about, because we actually
did that. And so in three that's when Galton coin
the term eugenics in his book Inquiries into Human Faculty

(21:46):
and It's Development, And I think it's so fascinating that
this set of cousins like basically shaped the cultural climate
of an era, because I mean, yes, you had Darwin's
ideas about biological evolution, but you also had all of
these progressive era people like so gung ho about social
Darwinism and like who can climb up the ladder and

(22:08):
like oh, you're you're worthy because you have all this money,
or you're worthy because you can afford such and such,
and you contribute to society, Caroline. They were like the
Kardashians of their day. Oh string of course words um
in in the eighteen nineties you had Kansas Dr F.
White Pilcher, who was already surgically sterilizing the feeble minded

(22:32):
children he saw children children, Yeah, just going ahead and
doing that. And Dr Harry Clay Sharp just castrating patients
you masturbated, And the American Medical Association also supported compulsory
sterilization for criminals. You know who was the president of
the American Medical Association for a time. Another Kardashian of

(22:55):
his day, Jay Mary and Sims, the father of gynecology,
whom we talked about in last podcast. Yeah, the racist
self promoting surgeon. Oh yeah, old school A m A
was kind of no good. And seriously, listeners, after you
listen to this episode, go back and listen to our
two parter on abortion, because um, they are, uh, they're

(23:19):
not helpful in that situation. Talk about bro culture. And
for another example of how this mindset was spreading among
the medical community, in one W Duncan mkim recommended just
killing people that quote, we deem unworthy of the high
privilege of reproduction via carbonic acid gas. So like the

(23:42):
gas chambers at concentration camps, just kill them, just kill them.
And in nineteen ten, you have the opening of the
Eugenics Record Office in New York's Cold Springs Harbor and
it's the epicenter of America's eugenics movement that the Nazis
would draw inspiration from. And uh, there was a New

(24:05):
York Times article about this Cold Springs Harbor lab that
the building still exists, and there was an exhibit not
too long ago, basically like opening up you know what
it was used for, and all of the they called
them like the haunted files, because these were the files
of people that they were essentially monitoring for you know, sterilization.

(24:30):
And there's this fantastic picture like that looks fantastic. It's like, oh,
vintage women in lab coats looking at records, how neat?
What what kind of old school rad stem ladies are these?
Oh god, there's sorting through eugenics records. Yeah, so equal opportunity,
horrible nous. Yeah, I mean, and it was it was
there that one of the superintendents, a guy named Harry Lawlin,

(24:55):
patched the sterilization plan that would spread across the states
and perto Rico. Essentially, the Eugenics Record Office established a
blueprint that the US government and state governments would replicate too.
I guess, uh negatively breed out um traits that they

(25:20):
deemed unworthy of reproduction. Yeah. And I mean when we
move into the nineteen twenties, we see pro eugenics propaganda
spreading through things like better Babies contests and fittest family's literature.
And I feel like we talked about this on our
long ago episode on Pageant Kiddos. Before Miss America, there
were better Babies contests. Yeah, so like, oh look at

(25:43):
this white baby, good for you baby for being white
and perfect um. For example, there was a poster that said,
every forty eight seconds someone is born in America. Who
will never grow up beyond age eight and uh, how
hopefully the quote uh few normal persons go to jail

(26:05):
because there's that word normal, normal and abnormal. A lot
of obsession with normalcy at that time. Um. And we
also have to revisit a landmark case in that we
discussed in our episode on disability and sexuality. UM, because
this episode apparently is like ten stuff. I never told
you episodes all in one, Um. But this is a

(26:26):
Supreme Court decision Buck v. Bell in which the Supreme
Court upheld legal sterilization. And we referenced Chief Justice Oliver
Wendell Holmes's opinion in that episode. But let's read it again,
shall we, because I mean, it really sums up the

(26:49):
mentality at the time. And this is coming from the
Supreme Court bench. It's better for the world if, instead
of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or let
them star for their imbecility, society can prevent those who
are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that
sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the

(27:12):
fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles are enough end quote
mind brain exploding it's all over the studio walls. Yeah,
because he just said compulsory vaccination, in other words, ain't
in a thing. It's just sterilizing you. It's just like

(27:33):
getting a technis shot. Yeah. But we should also note
and repeat for people who haven't listened to those earlier episodes,
that the three generations of imbeciles that he was referring
to were women who were judged to be promiscuous. Yeah.
I mean it was all based around the Buck in
this case was Carrie Buck, who was forcibly sterilized after
she was raped and impregnated and had her baby. And

(27:57):
her mother was I'm gonna say she was a literate
or something like that, so they were she just came
from because she now had the baby. That's the three
generations baby, Carrie and her mom. Yeah. And further driving
home how this was institutionalized. This was part of the
country's agenda in the nineteen thirties. The Rockefeller Foundation of

(28:20):
the Rockefeller family, of the Rockefeller Center where you I
skate in the holidays right exactly. They were carrying out
official population control research and theories coming out of this
foundation really expressed this general idea that economic problems in
underdeveloped countries around the world. We're really just problems of

(28:42):
too many people. If only we could control the population growth,
then the standard of living would rise, and we will
experiment with that. We these Americans in Puerto Rico, as
we'll talk about later in the podcast. UM. So, sterilization
abuse had actually dropped off a bit after you know,
the nineteen thirties, um you have the war happened, and

(29:07):
it picks up again around this fifties and sixties, and
especially in nineteen sixty four when lb J starts his
War on Poverty initiative, because that funnels federal money towards
sterilizations as part of its family planning effort with the

(29:28):
Family Planning Services and Population Research Act established by the
Office of Economic Opportunity, which incorporated sterilization into its family
planning portfolio. And speaking of portfolios, we should note that
access to the recently introduced and legalized pill was not

(29:49):
accessible to single women, for instance, at the time, and
we certainly did not have the array of contraceptive options
that are available for women to day, and sterilizations were
reimbursed by Medicaid and the Department of Health, Education and
Welfare HUE, which comes up a lot in this Uh

(30:11):
history was very loosey goosey about how these sterilizations were
offered and reimbursed. And this is a situation to where
it's like follow the money. That's right, Yeah, Because from
the late sixties up to nine you had one hundred
thousand voluntary ish sterilizations every year because while they had

(30:33):
obtained sign consent, it was not really so much informed
sign consent. You basically had doctors selling sterilizations to migrant,
working class women and welfare recipients, some of whom, like
we mentioned earlier, might not be able to read or
fully understand or we're just simply coerced. And after you know,

(30:54):
the post World War two baby boom, you have this
population boom anic people are freaking out about overpopulation. In
between nineteen seventy and nineteen seventy four we see a
threefold increase in female sterilization. But the line between voluntary
and involuntary is getting all fly blurry, And as we

(31:19):
talked about in our Mother's of Gynecology episode, like yes,
it is important that we established that there were some
women who absolutely wanted to have a hysterectomy and did
not want to have any more kids. But there were
far more women who were misled and coerced into these,

(31:42):
especially if you were poor or if you're a woman
of color. Yeah, I mean this really the date range
here in seventy four really drives at home in a
personal way because my brother was born in ninety and
so it's like, you know, not to make this about me,
but I mean it really does bring it home of
how recently this was happening and still I mean still

(32:05):
was happening. Um but as we move into the seventies
and you've got increasing access to birth control, it was
still largely just a benefit for middle class white women.
I mean, despite the fact that you've got ro versus Wade.
In nineteen seventy three, both voluntary and involuntary sterilization were
still the number one birth control method for women between

(32:28):
the ages of thirty and forty four. And we should
also say too, I don't have the legal timeline in
front of me. But even with that birth control access, yes,
it was mostly beneficial to middle class white women, but
especially to middle class married white women. Um So, if
we look though at African American women in the nineteen

(32:49):
fifties and sixties, sterilization, especially in the South, peaked By
nineteen seventy, twenty percent of all married African American women
had been sterilized. And you might ask, well, why are
they sterilizing all of these married women because they probably
already had children, right, which gets back to something I

(33:10):
said in our Mothers of Gynecology episode, where like, great,
when this was an enslaved population, keep popping out more laborers. However,
that abruptly that attitude abruptly shifted in the opposite direction
after the abolition of slavery, and suddenly black people having

(33:32):
children was seen as something unwanted in this country and
a product of their presumed hyper sexuality um and low
breeding you know um, and it was so common these uh,
forced hysterectomy is the sterilization abuse, particularly for black women
in the South that civil rights activist and organizer who

(33:55):
does not get enough spotlight, Fanny Lew Hamer, nicknamed it
the Mississippi appendectomy. And speaking of Fanny leu Hamer in
August nine four, the Freedom Summer is happening. Um, this
is part of the Mississippi Summer Freedom project. And Fanny
leu Hamer goes with the you know contention of civil

(34:19):
rights activists to the Democratic National Convention, and she is
planning to speak and LBJ is none too pleased about this.
He's like, Okay, listen, we're about to have this Fanny
lew Hammer woman on television. This is let's x nay
on the Hammer stay and he calls this impromptu press

(34:43):
conference to try to divert attention away from Hamer. And
I forget what the press conference was for what he
He claimed that it was going to be an urgent
matter that he had to announce, and it was literally
just saying, oh, hey, guys, I just wanted to make
everyone aware that this is the nine month anniversary of
JFK being shot, so arbitrary and and what is great, Like,

(35:04):
I guess the silver lining question mark question mark is
that the press was not stupid. They immediately were like, oh,
you're a jerk, Like what's Fanny Lew Hammer doing, Like,
let's get our cameras back over there, because you've clearly
misled us. And what Famny leu Hammer was doing was
speaking truth to power publicly in a televised moment at

(35:26):
a Democratic National Convention, talking about how she had been
forcibly sterilized after she went in for what she thought
was just uh like routine procedure and was sterilized against
her will. Um she was had that hysterectomy in nine
without her consent. And she for the very first time

(35:50):
linked the importance of voting rights with reproductive rights for
black women in Mississippi and the South more broadly, because
it was Paul Titians in these states who were allowing
this to happen, who were keeping these procedures legal. So
it's like, if we can never go vote, we are
always going to be subjected to this abuse, like our

(36:14):
bodies are being abused and we don't even have the
basic right to cast our vote for who is making
these kinds of decisions for us? And she was really
carrying the torch of her suffrage and abolitionist forbears like
I to be wells. She was emphasizing that need to

(36:34):
get politicians who are allowing this abuse out of office.
And it was really the first time that those two platforms,
reproductive rights and voting rights were merged. Yeah, I mean
demonstrating through her words and her actions of trying to
go help people register to vote, that she did demonstrate
not only the importance of it, obviously, but the fact

(36:58):
that all of these activists were beaten up, were arrested
just shows the links that white people in power were going.
And I mean, this is like a massive understatement, but
the lengths of these people were going to silence black
voters and to keep them from voting, because if you
had the opportunity to vote, why would you not vote
out people who are abusing power? Well, and speaking of

(37:20):
abusive power, Hammer also helped expose how legalized sterilization bills
were being proposed in the Mississippi legislature and in other
Southern state legislatures at the time, targeting black welfare recipients,
essentially saying, listen, we are only going to give you
your welfare benefits if you allow us to sterilize you.

(37:43):
You know, so choose, choose what do you want to
feed your kids or do you want to have more kids? Yeah,
And in nineteen sixty seven, you know, we mentioned earlier
this suspicion that so many people in the black community,
particularly in Black power groups, had for any type of
family planning service because of these sterilizations. In the nineteen

(38:04):
seven you have the Black Power Conference passing an anti
birth control resolution declaring at the equivalent to black genocide,
and not for nothing. You know, this community had been
subjected to absolutely horrific treatment. But at the same time, too,
those you know, those kinds of resolutions, which were largely

(38:25):
determined by male leadership, still wasn't providing women of color
with agency over their bodies. And that's something that black
liberation activists Tony Cade says with quote, I've been made
aware of the national call to sisters to abandon birth control,
to pick at family planning centers, to raise revolutionaries, But

(38:46):
what plans do you have for the care of me
and my child? Exactly? Yeah, So the pushback against these
horrifying procedures is not mutually exclusive from the need for
birth control and family planning, because has a lot of
women just continued to go get their birth control because yes, absolutely,
let's let's fight against these horrifying procedures. But I still

(39:08):
want to have control over my body and reproduction. And
it was really in nineteen seventy three that the tide
began to term somewhat when it was publicized that the
Office of Economic Opportunity had funded sterilizations of Mary Alice
Ralph and Mini Ralph, and these two sisters were fourteen

(39:32):
and twelve years old respectively at the time. They were
living in Alabama, and their mother was illiterate, and she
thought that she was simply taking them to the doctor
to get a depot privera shot to put them on
birth control, and so she, not being able to read,
she signs a consent form with an X and essentially consents,

(39:55):
but not really because she doesn't know that she's doing
it to them being uh sterilized. So the Southern Poverty
Law Center steps in. They sue and win, which finally
instigates regulatory changes within HU the Department of Health, Education,
and Welfare, which is really kind of the nexus of
all of this federally funded sterilization happening, and also raising

(40:19):
public attention to an issue that the district court in
this case determined affected around one hundred thousand poor women
each year. So we had said that earlier in the podcast.
You know that the stat of sixty thou people in
the US were forcibly sterilized with it, you know, in
the twentieth century, But that doesn't take into account all

(40:41):
of these kind of supposedly consensual sterilizations that were happening
to hundreds of thousands of women at the time, and
not just black women, right exactly. Yeah, And in the
nineties seventies, at the same time that you have white
second way feminists fighting for rights to abortion, you also
have Chicana feminists railing against this practice of sterilization without consent.

(41:06):
The discovery that this was such a widespread practice among
Mexican American women in California totally galvanized their feminist activism,
and it pitted them against both oblivious white feminists and
also Mexican American nationalists who saw birth control as betrayal.
And so all of this stems from stereotypes that stretched

(41:28):
way back in American history of Mexicans as quote unquote
hyperbreeders and welfare moms in waiting and listen to this.
The local chapter in California of the National Organization for
Women refused to help with this anti sterilization abuse activism

(41:49):
because they wanted to focus all of their reproductive rights
efforts on abortion and pick it out, Caroline here about
to jump out of your seat. And of course you
also have male Chicano groups brushing them off completely because
that was not a part of their Mexican American rights agenda.

(42:10):
But I'm not done with the white ladies yet, Caroline.
I gotta circle back to those white ladies, because not
this was not only a case of them being like, oh,
I don't even know that this is happening, Ladi da.
They knew it was going on. They refused to help, yes,
because they wanted to focus all of their attention on
abortion access, but also because there were white women with

(42:33):
private doctors who would give them hysterectomys upon request. And
at this time, do you remember how common sterilization was
as like a go to birth control, And they were like, uh,
if you start restricting sterilization access, then I don't know
if my white uterus is really going to benefit from

(42:54):
that at the end of the day, right right exactly. Yeah,
Especially like when protective measures like waiting periods or things
like that came up as a way literally to protect
women from forced or coerced sterilization, a lot of these
white feminists were like, I don't want to wait thirty

(43:14):
days or two days or six hours, like no, I
want it now. It's my uterus and I want it out.
And because of all of this, women of color had
to do this for themselves. They didn't have a ton
of allies in their corner um. But in ninety five
we have the landmark case that comes up in pretty
much like any legal paper you read about serialization abuse,

(43:38):
Madrigal v. Quill Again, in which a group of Mexican
American women brought a lawsuit against the University of Southern
California slash Los Angeles County General Hospital for coerced tubal
ligations post cesareans um. So remember this is still happening
where it's like a woman has a Cisian section, the
doctors like WHOA, well, I'm in here, and rad lady

(44:03):
lawyer alert. Chicana lawyer Antonio Hernandez teams up with Dr
Bernard Rosenfeld, who worked at County General and was noticing
all of this happening. He was like, um, this is
not okay. So she had him kind of gather up
evidence on the slide to these coercive sterilizations happening and

(44:26):
built the case against the hospital and shout out to
the PBS documentary No Mass Babes, which covers all this history.
And in the end the judge did not rule in
the women's favor. Attributing it to a quote clash of cultures.
And also he just dismissed it as a breakdown in

(44:48):
communication between the patients and the doctor, communication as in
having them sign forms in English that Spanish speaking women
could not read. Yeah, but nonetheless the case did get
the ball rolling for bilingual sterilization consent forms, tighter guidelines
including waiting periods, an emphasis that welfare benefits would not

(45:10):
be taken away, and rules about no sterilizations for women
under twenty one, which is positive. But again, not all
of those second wave white feminists were down Now and
now we hop from the United States mainland over to
Puerto Rico, because we mentioned Puerto Rico earlier when we

(45:30):
were talking about the Eugenics Record Office and the superintendent
Harry Lawlan, who kind of put together the blueprint for
all of these laws and the federal funding that would
happen later on, and Puerto Rico really became almost a
giant lab experiment for this population control that US government

(45:53):
officials were convinced needed to happen. So in Law one
sixteen is passed, which essentially institutionalizes sterilization of Puerto Rican
women amid American concerns at population control on the island.
And it was designed by that eugenics board in the

(46:15):
name of quote, catalyzing economic growth and reducing unemployment. And
we should note it was funded both publicly and privately.
And again follow the money, follow the money. I mean,
like during the progressive era that sterilization was so much
motivated by the whole concept of breeding. But then after
World War two, well, and also welfare. But then we're

(46:37):
after World War two. Oh, it's all about money. Well yeah,
and I mean they still use the same types of
coercive tactics we've talked about. That they had people going
door to door talking to women. Um employers preferred sterilized workers.
There was also a financial subsidy for getting the procedure.
And again you see women being misled and confused by

(46:59):
the tie your tubes, get your tubes tied expression. And
even as contraceptive technology was improving in the United States,
the United States say oh, hey, Puerto Rico, we've got
the pill. Now here are some condoms. Nope, they relied
solely on sterilization. And we have to shout out another

(47:20):
rad woman, Dr Helen Rodriguez Trias, who's a reproductive rights
advocate who spearheaded SASA, which was the Committee to End
Sterilization Abuses in the nineteen seventies, and she was really
responsible for bringing this issue of sterilization abuse happening in
Puerto Rico to you know, mainland United States, kind of

(47:41):
raising the flag about that. And she said, women make
choices based on alternatives, and there haven't been many alternatives
in Puerto Rico. And it became so normalized that yes,
I mean there were you know, like women in the US,
there were some women who were like absolutely, you know,
I wanted to be like Geisha, I'm done having kids

(48:02):
or I don't want any kids. But they were also
there was a story I was reading about um one
woman whose friend had been sterilized, and she was like,
she got it, well, I want that, I want it
to I mean, they like culturally made it into like
a desirable thing. It's propaganda. It was government propaganda in

(48:24):
the name of population control and essentially more money for
the US federal government. Yeah, I mean exactly. And by
nineteen sixty five, what that turned into was that a
third of all Puerto Rican mothers under the age of
forty nine were sterilized Uh, that means that they were
at a ten times higher risk of being sterilized compared
with women on the American mainland. And we see rad

(48:47):
doctor Rodriguez Triez bringing attention to Puerto Ricos sterilization abuse
in New York. So yes, we've already mentioned that she
was a founding member of the Committee to End Sterilization Abuse,
but she was also on the Committee for a Orsian
Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse, and she testified before Hugh
for passage of federal sterilization guidelines in nineteen seventy nine,

(49:10):
which is the same year that California finally repealed its
sterilization laws. But as all of us is starting to
happen in the nineteen seventies, we now have to shift
focus to Native American women and its info is coming
from a pair of papers won by Dr Alexandra Menace

(49:31):
Stern in two thousand five, Sterilized in the name of
Public Health and also one looking specifically into forced abortions
and sterilizations among Native American women in the nineteen seventies.
So if we hop back a little bit to nineteen
sixty five, the Indian Health Service begins sterilizing Native American women.

(49:52):
I mean, seriously, it's like no woman of color is safe,
and it's it's I mean, it's all been horrifying, but
but I mean the percentages are mind boggling of Native
American women between fifteen and forty four were sterilized by
the seventies. And and it's horrifying enough for any woman
to be forcibly sterilized. But when you look at the

(50:13):
fact that they're sterilizing women for him, fertility and children
is a way to not only continue the tribe but
also to assure your social status within your tribe. In
a lot of cases, like it's with these women, as
with all of the women we've been talking about, you've
got like so many layers of trauma. You've got the

(50:34):
unexpected and forced sterilization, but you've also got the fact
that now like you're unable to have any agency over
your own body. Well and it and it still too
echoes you know, our legacy of slavery, where bodies were
property and monetized, you know, And and that family aspect

(50:55):
to Caroline was something that African American women also talked
about out um during you know, the Roe v. Wade
era of saying like, okay, yeah, abortion rights. But you know,
whereas white middle class women, upwardly mobile white women were
fighting for the right to not have a family, black

(51:15):
women talked about how yes, they were fighting for a
right to have family, and how important historically Black community
and specifically black family has been for them. It's the
nexus of their lives, it's their safe space right well,
exactly because in the system of slavery, families are ripped apart.

(51:36):
So Native American activists sund the alarm about this noticeable
rise in for sterilizations and abortions, and it catches the
attention of South Dakotas senator, who gets the Government Accounting
Office to investigate further. So in n the g O

(51:57):
steps in and they verify okay, yeah, So between nineteen
seventy three and nineteen seventy six, there were at least
three thousand, four hundred six sterilizations happening for these women
living on reservations. But in their report, the g O
did not declare them forced. They were like, yeah, there

(52:19):
wasn't a lot of evidence of coercion, you know, I mean,
it's not the first time we've we've had governments not
believe what women say about their own bodies. Um. But
to put this in perspective, the number of sterilizations that
were happening among Native American women per capita was equivalent

(52:39):
to four dfty two thousand non Native American women. So
between nineteen seventy nine seventy six, as many as twenty
five to fifty percent of Native American women were coercively sterilized.
And again these tactics included the same all threats of
you know what, I don't do this, We're going to

(53:01):
take away your health care, We're going to take away
your kids. Yeah. But thanks to these women's activism and
the public reaction to the Government Accounting Offices findings, you
do see rules for federally subsidized sterilization start to tighten.
So due to all of this activism that really piques
in the nineteen seventies, which has led absolutely by women

(53:23):
of color, you see the closure of federal funds going
to subsidize sterilizations and the repeal of many of these
states sterilization laws. But it is still not a bygone relic.
And California listeners, brace yourself, because yes, California issued a

(53:47):
formal apology, offered no reparations, but issued a formal apology
a while back for its supreme violation of human rights,
but first as satistic. Correctional institutions in the US are
collectively the second largest provider of reproductive health services in

(54:08):
the United States. I did not know that, Caroline, but
it makes sense. It does makes sense. And from two
thousand and six, doctors into California prisons, the California Institution
for Women in Corona and Valley State Prison for Women
in Chauchia illegally sterilized about a hundred and fifty female

(54:29):
inmates via tubal ligation. And this again was uncovered by
the invaluable resource, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and what
they uncovered is that there were possibly one hundred more
for sterilizations dating back to the late nineties, and they
found that between the state of California paid doctors a

(54:53):
hundred and forty seven thousand dollars for the procedures and
echoing the progress of era BS, pregnant inmates pegged for
high recidivism were the targets of these procedures, and again
they were often performed during labor, which is hello uh
legally coercive because a woman in labor under so much

(55:16):
pain and dress cannot give informed consent, and there's this
horrifying gentleman. This gentleman, he's no gentleman, he's a he's
another deuce, just like so. Gynecologist James Heinrich, who was
in the prison system, felt, just like his progressive era
Forbears did, that he was providing a public service. And

(55:40):
this isn't like something from his diary that the Center
for Investigative Reporting found, he told them that quote over
a tenure period, that isn't a huge amount of money
compared to what you save in welfare paying for these
unwanted children. I mean, as they procreated more what I know,
the money it's all about it's all about them. I mean, yes,

(56:01):
it's about racism and population control in that sense, but
it is so much about that money. But is this
not just more evidence that so many people care more
about the fetus then the woman who's pregnant or the
child once it's born. Because they're putting all of this

(56:22):
money and time and resources into prevent taking away a
woman's agency and ability to reproduce or not reproduced as
she desires, and they're just going in and doing the
surgical operation without consent or informed consent, and at the

(56:42):
expense of this woman's the life she desires. It's just
like boggles my mind. And and yet they're like, oh,
it's for everyone's good. But then they turned around and
there it's not like they're giving any support to the
children she has, you know what I mean. Well, and again,
in all of these scenarios, I shouldn't say scenarios as
if they're you know, concocted somehow. In all of these events, yes,

(57:06):
there were some women who were consenting to this. We're
legitimately consenting to this, but it's like even even within
even the context of that consent is to use that
old buzzword, problematic because of the motivations for even presenting
the option of sterilization UM. And it's not government whistleblowers

(57:30):
who have had any hand in stopping these coercive tactics,
this abuse, this outright abuse UM. In the case of
the California prisoners, it was the prisoner rights group Justice Now,
which in two thousand and eight finally got the ball
rolling to investigate and stop the sterilizations UM. And on

(57:52):
a related note, in two thousand thirteen, the North Carolina
state legislature did approve ten million dollars in companies station
for the victims of eugenics between and nineteen seventy four,
and Virginia followed suit in March of but as far
as I know, the North Carolina GOP was none too

(58:15):
pleased with the idea of dolling out that money. Um So,
we all know that North Carolina is doing a great
job of everything right now in North Carolina. But North
Carolina is so beautiful. It's a lovely state. And I
really like North Carolina for a lot of reasons, but
I don't like their government. UM So, all of this

(58:37):
in the past hour and change to say that, yeah,
we've got to broaden our definition of reproductive rights to
an intersectional reproductive justice because abortion and birth control absolutely important.
I love my I U D. I am so grateful

(59:00):
for my I UG. But we have to keep in
mind how all of these issues affect not only college educated,
salaried white ladies like us, but also the most marginalized women,
the women on the margins. To put it another way, um,
who are incarcerated, who might be in immigration detention centers today,

(59:24):
who are often left out of those conversations and and
that activism well and just simply exercising empathy and realizing
that not everybody wants the same thing you want. Um.
I think, at the risk of sounding like a broken record,
this whole episode is also an advertisement for the need
for better and more comprehensive sex ed um as well
as just a better a better education system in this

(59:47):
country period. Um. I you know, just on an article
about how formal sex ed is on the down swing
in this country, and it breaks my freaking heart to
to say that instead of a string of expletives, which
is what I really want to say. Well, and this
might sound disingenuous coming from to white podcast fosse, who

(01:00:09):
have just talked about this issue for a really long time,
but it is another lesson for feminists like us today
to listen more and more closely to women of color. Oh,
without a doubt, and I hope we hear from you.
So with that, send us your letters. Mom Stuff at
how stuff works dot com is our email address. You

(01:00:32):
can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or messages
on Facebook. And we've got a couple of messages to
share with you right now. Well, I have a letter
here from Zara in response to our Salary Secrets episode,
she says, I know people are very uncomfortable talking salary,
even those who are aware of the gender pay gap.

(01:00:54):
I don't have those reservations. How can women, people of color,
and other minorities make sure that they are paid fairly?
Prior to the Lily lad Better Fair Pay Act of
two thousand nine, the statute of limitations with six months.
You had six months from the start of your job
to know and seek redress for any gender pay gap.
That's not a long time, especially with the general reticence

(01:01:14):
about discussing salaries. The Lily lad Better Fair Pay Act
at least allows you to go back further. I think
there's no limit as long as the pay gap is
still in effect, and get two years back pay recovery.
I think two years is not much, but it's better
than nothing. Back to the topic, what I usually do
is either disclose my own salary and ask if that

(01:01:34):
seems fair for such a position, or ask people for
their own salaries, but make it clear that I want
a ballpark figure, not the exact amount. People are usually
more comfortable saying your salary sounds right, or you should
ask for more and sometimes I'll even say a good
five grand more, I'm earning a low sixty K salary,
or I'm earning between sixty and sixty five K. I've

(01:01:57):
even asked, when between jobs, how much someone with my
experience earn. I usually get useful answers that I can
use in my negotiations. I go the my research tells
me that the market rate for this position is X.
Does that fit your own range? Route? It's harder for
them to lowball me when I show that I've done
my homework. And then Zara has sent us like, oh,

(01:02:20):
let me count approximately seventy thousand links from the website
ask a Manager. And I want to make sure to
mention that because several other listeners out there who've written
us about this episode have also recommended that we and
fellow listeners check out ask a Manager. And so she
says that the website ask a Manager has a ton
of great information about salary negotiations since it's a bunch

(01:02:41):
of posts, and if you fair listeners want to check
it out, go to ask a manager dot org. So,
thank you, Zara for all of your helpful resources. And also, Zara, uh,
your name is so familiar because you are a gold
Star listener. You've been with us and interacting with us
for years, so I thank you for all of your

(01:03:01):
insights you've provided to us. And I've got a let
her here from Maria from the same episode, and she writes,
I just listened to your conversation with Gina and Ashley
of recruit Her, and I wish I could have been
in the room with you. I would have loved to
ask about salary negotiations outside of tech, specifically education. This
is a fantastic question, by the way, Maria. She says,

(01:03:22):
I'm a relatively new teacher, and I found that many
educators on the KGE twelve spectrum come up against the
do it for the children, It's not really about the
money attitude when trying to negotiate for higher pay. I
found this pattern is for people also working in professions
that are often framed as callings like artists, musicians, teachers, etcetera.
It's as though the nobility of these careers somehow excuses

(01:03:45):
being underpaid. As a young teacher just beginning her career,
I'm trying to find an assertive and proactive way to
fight for my worth in a slightly sticky situation. If
any sminty listeners out there have some tips or tricks,
it would really help a girl out. Also, UH, to
Maria's point, we've heard from UH listeners working in nonprofit

(01:04:06):
who have the same question, like, Hey, it's like a
similar like I have the calling. This is a very
like noble thing and budgets are often very tight. So
what are you supposed to do in those kinds of
cases to make sure you're getting paid what you're worth?
So let's keep this conversation going. Let's kind of build
some kind of resource for this, because clearly we need

(01:04:26):
some tips. Well, we've also heard from listeners in the
service industry, particular people at restaurants, whether they're front of
house or back a house, and they're saying the same
things to us in terms of like literally, if I
asked for like a dollar fifty more an hour, I
could get fired. And I bet this is the same
for retail. One of my best seeds was in retail
for a long time and she faced those issues. Um,

(01:04:47):
so let's do something about it. Mom. Stuff at how
stuff works dot com is where you can send all
of your tips and tricks and for links all of
our social media as well as all of our blogs, videos,
and podcasts with our sources. So you can read more
about the horrifying history of sterilization abuse in the United
States and Puerto Rico. Head on over to stuff Mom

(01:05:07):
Never Told You dot com. We're more on this and
thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot
com