Posts Tagged eugenics

Birth Control symbole- IUD and contraceptive Pills and Condom
By Maya Dusenbery • 9 years ago

How to advocate for IUDs and implants given the history of birth control coercion

Dani McClain has a great piece at The Nation today exploring the growing enthusiasm for IUDs and implants — those super-effective long-acting reversible contraceptives, or LARCs — within the context of the long history of eugenicist attempts at controlling poor women of color’s fertility in the US. 

Dani McClain has a great piece at The Nation today exploring the growing enthusiasm for IUDs and implants — those super-effective long-acting reversible contraceptives, or LARCs — within the context of the long history ...
By Alexandra Brodsky • 11 years ago

Video: Contextualizing California prison sterilizations

I posted yesterday about the recently exposed forced sterilizations in California prisons. On All In, Chris Hayes explains why we should be outraged but not shocked by such reproductive coercion given the state’s history of eugenics and unconstitutionally cruel prison conditions, in the news again today thanks to a 30,000-strong hunger strike. The clip is worth a watch, but Hayes doesn’t take the obvious next step: forced sterilization isn’t only of a kind with California’s particular brand of mass incarceration but also with the inherent abuse of imprisonment.

Transcript, via MSNBC, after the jump.

I posted yesterday about the recently exposed forced sterilizations in California prisons. On All In, Chris Hayes explains why we should be outraged but not shocked by such reproductive coercion given the state’s history of ...
By Alexandra Brodsky • 11 years ago

Guest post: The freedom not to choose birth control

This is a guest post by Gloria Malone. Gloria is a freelance writer, blogger, and teen and young parent advocate based in NYC. You can find her on Twitter and on her personal blog, teenmomnyc.com.

I was 15 years old when I had my daughter. A week after having her I went to my post birth appointment and was told by the doctor that she had already scheduled an insertion appointment for a five year hormonal Mirena IUD all I had to do was say yes and this “super convenient, hassle free, and no pill” form of birth control would be mine. My teenage self agreed and a few days later I had my IUD. However, the ...

This is a guest post by Gloria Malone. Gloria is a freelance writer, blogger, and teen and young parent advocate based in NYC. You can find her on Twitter and on her personal blog,

By Alexandra Brodsky • 11 years ago

Weekly Feminist Reader

NSA surveillance and the male gaze.

Racist of the Week Paulina Deen has been fired.

But, before that, she inspired some really great tweets.

The Department of Ed will collect data on anti-LGBT bullying.

We need to talk about disability and feminism.

High schools are trying restorative justice to keep kids from dropping out.

On the “safe kind of brown.”

An open letter to gay men about women’s consent.

Oh no! The poor, poor sexually abusive colleges!

What’s a city Indian?

A female writer responds to Vice‘s recent spread fetishizing other female writers’ suicides.

We are the 15%.

What if fatness is part of human biodiversity?

On ...

NSA surveillance and the male gaze.

Racist of the Week Paulina Deen has been fired.

But, before that, she inspired some really great tweets.

The Department of Ed will collect data on ...
By Juliana Britto Schwartz • 11 years ago

Latinas were targeted for involuntary sterilizations for decades

Today we are reminded that pro-choice politics are as much about the right to reproduce as they are about the right to abortion. We are also reminded of our country’s history of taking away the right to reproduce of so many women of color.

A new report put out by the University of Michigan has found that Latin@s* were disproportionately targeted for involuntary sterilization under the U.S. eugenics movement. Between 1909 and 1979, Latin@s made up 20-30% of the 60,000 people who were coercively sterilized in the U.S., mostly in mental institutions in California. The majority of these people were women who were labeled as “bad girls” or “sexually wayward”: in other words, women who didn’t follow the strict ...

Today we are reminded that pro-choice politics are as much about the right to reproduce as they are about the right to abortion. We are also reminded of our country’s history of taking away the right ...

Ethiopian Jew in Israel
By Alexandra Brodsky • 11 years ago

Birth control shots were forced on Ethiopian immigrants to Israel

Five years after allegations were first levied, and over a month after the issue again attracted mainstream attention through the Israel Educational Television documentary “Vacuum,” the Israeli government has admitted that Ethiopian women were coerced into accepting long-acting birth control shots, likely Depo-Provera. Haaretz writes:

…While the women were still in transit camps in Ethiopia they were sometimes intimidated or threatened into taking the injection. “They told us they are inoculations,” said one of the women interviewed [in “Vacuum”]. “They told us people who frequently give birth suffer. We took it every three months. We said we didn’t want to.”

The widespread practice is thought to account for the last decade’s near-halving of the Ethiopian birth rate in Israel. ...

Five years after allegations were first levied, and over a month after the issue again attracted mainstream attention through the Israel Educational Television documentary “Vacuum,” the Israeli government has admitted that Ethiopian women were coerced ...
By Maya Dusenbery • 12 years ago

North Carolina still trying to compensate victims of state’s forced sterilization program

“I have to carry these scars with me. I have to live with this for the rest of my life.” –Elaine Riddick, who was forcibly sterilized under North Carolina’s eugenics program in 1967

We’ve written before about North Carolina’s particularly terrible forced sterilization law. One of 31 states with a government-run eugenics program, North Carolina is now the only one to be trying to compensate the survivors of this shameful chapter in their history:

It began as a way to control welfare spending on poor white women and men, but over time, North Carolina shifted focus, targeting more women and more blacks than whites. A third of the sterilizations performed in North Carolina were done on girls under ...

“I have to carry these scars with me. I have to live with this for the rest of my life.” –Elaine Riddick, who was forcibly sterilized under North Carolina’s eugenics program in 1967

We’ve written before about ...

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