(p. 23). This is particularly intriguing because Native American women should, theoretically, have one of the lower counts based simply on the fact that their population size is so much smaller than other racial groups. This suggests a discriminatory policy at work in the late 20th century. Moreover, it is crucial recognize that reproductive abuses were imposed upon other minority races as well. In the initial eugenics period, other minority races were targeted in addition to Native Americans, such as French Canadians in Vermont (Gallagher, p. 82). Furthermore, there has historically been an extreme disproportion of forced or coerced sterilizations performed on Hispanics, as studied in the works of Ehrenreich (2008) and Espino (2007). Criticisms of the governments’ motivations for sterilizations arose within Hispanic communities in the 1970’s as well, where again the alleged reasoning for the lack of informed consent provided to Hispanic women was blamed on the women’s inability to understand English and, thus, attributed to an unintentional miscommunication (Jaeggli, p. 12). Additionally, African American communities voiced concern about what they believed was a targeting of their reproductive rights by the government, as the sterilization rate in 1970 of African American women was literally twice as high as that of the average white American woman (Jaeggli, p. 10). Many African American women living in the South in the 1960’s have attested to having had their uteruses removed after undergoing unrelated abdominal surgeries and not knowing about it until much later in life, perhaps when they tried to become pregnant. As in the cases of procedures performed by the IHS, physicians who performed such procedures on African American women claimed that all surgeries were consented to (Kluchin, p. 73). This supports the idea that implementing sterilizations to
(p. 23). This is particularly intriguing because Native American women should, theoretically, have one of the lower counts based simply on the fact that their population size is so much smaller than other racial groups. This suggests a discriminatory policy at work in the late 20th century. Moreover, it is crucial recognize that reproductive abuses were imposed upon other minority races as well. In the initial eugenics period, other minority races were targeted in addition to Native Americans, such as French Canadians in Vermont (Gallagher, p. 82). Furthermore, there has historically been an extreme disproportion of forced or coerced sterilizations performed on Hispanics, as studied in the works of Ehrenreich (2008) and Espino (2007). Criticisms of the governments’ motivations for sterilizations arose within Hispanic communities in the 1970’s as well, where again the alleged reasoning for the lack of informed consent provided to Hispanic women was blamed on the women’s inability to understand English and, thus, attributed to an unintentional miscommunication (Jaeggli, p. 12). Additionally, African American communities voiced concern about what they believed was a targeting of their reproductive rights by the government, as the sterilization rate in 1970 of African American women was literally twice as high as that of the average white American woman (Jaeggli, p. 10). Many African American women living in the South in the 1960’s have attested to having had their uteruses removed after undergoing unrelated abdominal surgeries and not knowing about it until much later in life, perhaps when they tried to become pregnant. As in the cases of procedures performed by the IHS, physicians who performed such procedures on African American women claimed that all surgeries were consented to (Kluchin, p. 73). This supports the idea that implementing sterilizations to
DForbesSOC297.docx