NYU Local: Women’s Health: Involuntary Sterilization Then and Now
This article features Government Accountability Project’s whistleblower complaints and was published here.
Many may think of forced sterilization as a thing of the past, a practice so heinous that there is no way it is still continued today. However, if the history of this practice tells us anything, it is that a target will always remain on the heads of the marginalized. The only thing that changes with time is the manner in which that target manifests.
Ableism and the demonization of mental health struggles play an extremely large role in the global history of involuntary sterilization. In the United States, California acted as a forced sterilization kingpin, passing 3 Asexualization Acts in 1909, 1913, and 1917. These legislative pieces targeted those who were ‘mentally ill’, ‘mentally deficient’, and ‘feebleminded’. These distinctions are placed in quotations, as many of the defining factors of such labels were essentially baseless, or racist/misogynistic in nature. For example, feeblemindedness was a label assigned to people who displayed promiscuity, criminality, or social dependency. Social dependency, of course refers to impoverished people. The promiscuity associated with feeblemindedness was often aimed at young women who had sexual partners outside of marriage or at a young age.
The American eugenics movement propelled sterilization ideology into the mainstream. During the early 1930’s, forced...
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