FORCED STERILIZATION IN NORTH AMERICA

Thirty states in the United States passed eugenics laws between 1907 and 1931, and these laws were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1916 and 1927. By the end of the World War II, it was estimated that 40,000 sterilizations had taken place, mostly on poor white women. Because of racial segregation, it was not deemed necessary to sterilize black people at this time. This situation was to change, however. Between 1949 and 1960, for example, of the 104 surgical sterilizations performed in South Carolina mental hospitals, all but two were performed on blacks. All these sterilizations were done on women. Cox (1997) writes that these federally funded practices were prevalent in Alabama and North Carolina also in the 1970s.

The Native American population has also been subjected to forced sterilization. From 1973 to 1976, for example, 3,406 American Indian women were sterilized, many of whom were under twenty-one years old. For many decades, disdain towards American Indians as a people was pervasive among health professionals and social workers, and the eugenics boards were quick to characterize women of Indian origin as mentally defective, and therefore as unfit to reproduce. The Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center, which reports abuses by the Indian Health Services (IHS), reports that sterilization abuse is found to be still going on as late as the 1990s and DepoProvera and Norplant are routinely used as birth control methods. Paternalistic policies toward American Indians allow the federal government to make decisions on their behalf without their full consent or participation. Sterilization abuse has been going on for quite some time but they were investigated only since the 1970s. Carpio (2004) writes that even though some reforms have taken place with regard to conditions of sterilization, imposition of mainstream social standards and the inability of women to challenge professional health workers from the mainstream who have stereotyped beliefs about American Indians leads to continuation of these practices. Grekul et al. (2004) state that in Alberta, Canada, aboriginal people were the main targets of Eugenic boards in the years 1929 to 1972. They were overrepresented among the cases presented for sterilization and overrepresented among those who were sterilized without consent. In the latter part of the twentieth century some of these women in Alberta sued the provincial government for damages and were compensated for this injustice.

In the neoliberal environment of the late twentieth century poor people have often been denied access to government and social support. They have been persuaded to undergo sterilization because they cannot afford to support large families. In the United States, individuals are expected to be self-reliant and to not expect social support, even when social conditions are not conducive for them to be self-reliant. Social assistance is available for sterilization purposes, however. Under these circumstances, those who suffer from poverty and destitution may be forced to “choose”sterilization to control their reproduction. People in this situation, who are mostly women of color, have been denied economic support but encouraged to use government subsidies to use sterilization or pharmaceutical methods such as Norplant for birth control. Writing in 1996, Broomfield stated that the bundle of so-called welfare reform measures with their family caps and Norplant provisions in place in the United States are essentially punitive. Instead of helping those in need to become able to take care of their children with provisions of education and skills training, they blame the victims and punish them. She argued that one theory behind the reform package is based on eugenic premise that certain people in society do not deserve to procreate. The often incorrect public perception of welfare recipient is based on stereotypes grounded in racism, sexism, and classism.