We are lucky enough to be able to choose about our birth control options. Some people, all over the world, have not been given that option. Forced sterilizations have been performed in the United States and Canada, as well as around the world. Find out why these atrocities were committed and learn about your contraceptive rights.
Eugenics
Eugenics is the practice of trying to improve the human species. This is the commitment to build a faster, smarter and better human being. Many spay/neuter programs, including programs in many US states, were created to improve the gene pool. These forced sterilizations focused on people with mental disabilities or people with physical disabilities, such as blindness.
timeline
In 1897, Michigan became the first state to introduce forced sterilization legislation. This legislature did not pass; North made the Pennsylvania attempts a few years later. The first state to introduce sterilization laws was Indiana, in 1907; Washington and California did the same in 1907. In 1927, the famous sterilization case Buck v. Bell was heard in the supreme courts, which legalized forced sterilizations, and the era of more forced sterilizations began. In 1942 the case Skinner v. Oklahoma ruled that you can’t sterilize someone as a punishment, which partially reduced forced sterilizations. By 1963, most states had stopped using sterilization laws, though many of them stayed on the law books longer: North Carolina didn’t rescind its laws until 1974. About 70,000 Americans were sterilized against their will. Will.
dollar vs. Bell
In 1924, Virginia passed a law that all mentally disabled people must be sterilized for eugenic reasons. In 1927, Carrie Bell was ordered to be sterilized. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. explained that the sanctity of the gene pool trumped a person’s physical rights. The reason for sterilizing Carrie was that she was supposedly mentally slower and had a history of prostitution. Current studies have shown that Carrie was likely sterilized due to her and her mother’s promiscuous ways.
sexism
As the Carrie Bell case demonstrates, forced sterilizations of women were often performed for unjust reasons. While men were allowed to be sexually promiscuous (and were often encouraged to be), women were required to be chaste. Having children out of wedlock could lead to sterilization. Some women were sterilized without their knowledge. Many of the women who were forcibly sterilized were barely female, often as young as 14 or even younger.
racism
In many states and provinces, racism was a motivating factor for mandatory sterilizations. In North Carolina, for example, many black women were sterilized when they went to give birth to their babies. In Alberta, eugenics was allegedly being used to prevent more babies from being born with mental or physical disabilities. However, too large a proportion of Métis women were sterilized. The Métis people are an Aboriginal people, having a First Nations heritage mixed with European settlers. The government may have been concerned that they represented mestizaje, that is, the mixing of racial genes.
Poverty
Just as gender and race are factors in forced sterilizations, socioeconomic status is also a factor. Often gender, race, and class were conflated. Most of the time it was black people who were poor, and often it was poor black women who were sterilized against their will. Some argued that sterilizing the poor was a blessing because it allowed a family to take care of the children they already had.
Your rights
You have the right not to be sterilized without your consent. Regardless of physical or mental disabilities, no one in Canada or the United States is legally allowed to be sterilized without consent.
However, you can choose to undergo sterilization for your birth control method. Birth control is still in your hands, not in those of the governments. Learn more about your birth control options to prevent unwanted pregnancies and use your power of choice.
