The story of a woman who fought compulsory sterilization
The US has been in an uproar since a Supreme Court draft overturning Roe v. Wade leaked a few weeks ago. Many American women and other people with uteri are terrified that our rights to bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom will soon be taken away.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t stop with Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court has A LOT of power. Most people don’t realize how much. Roe v. Wade was born out of the Court’s interpretation of the “right to privacy” in The Constitution, and many other precedents based on this right could fall if the Court decides to start interpreting it differently, like the ones that make gay and interracial marriages legal, for starters.
The Roe v. Wade thing has caused a lot of ordinary people to start learning more about Supreme Court case law. I took a couple of classes about this exact thing not too long ago, and there’s a particular case that comes to mind when it comes to the Supreme Court and human rights that I think merits our attention at this moment.
This is the story of Carrie Buck, who brought a case to the Supreme Court in 1927 because she did not want to be forcibly sterilized after Clarence Garland, the nephew of her foster parents had raped and impregnated her.
Carrie’s biological mother, Emma Buck, had been committed to The Virginia Colony for Epileptics and the Feebleminded after having been abandoned by her husband, Frederick, and being thought to have contracted syphilis, along with being accused of prostitution and “immorality” (whatever that means).
This resulted in Buck being placed with foster parents John and Alice Dobbs.
After Buck became pregnant, her foster parents saw this as a sign that she was promiscuous, and therefore “feebleminded.” They had committed to the same Colony where her mother had lived. Her newborn daughter, Vivian, was taken away from her. Eight years later, Vivian later died of an intestinal infection after contracting measles.
Later, Buck was selected by Albert S. Priddy, a doctor at the Colony, to test the constitutionality of Virginia’s new compulsory sterilization law. She was chosen based on the fact that both her, her mother, and her daughter were thought to be “feebleminded,” suggesting that “feeblemindedness” was genetic.
One thing that I think is interesting about this case is that Irving P. Whitehead, the attorney representing Buck, was himself a known eugenicist, and was also friends with Albert Priddy. It would seem that Buck had no real defense in this case– the prosecution and the defense were in bed together, and were intentionally using Buck to legitimize the eugenics laws that they both supported.
The Court ruled in an eight-to-one decision that Virginia’s sterilization law was constitutional, and Buck was sterilized.
In the Court’s opinion, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. famously stated:
“Three generations of imbeciles is enough.”
Buck’s sister Doris was also sterilized without her knowledge or consent when she was in the hospital with appendicitis. She did not discover until much later that she was unable to have children.
Buck was released from the Colony after her sterilization, and she married William D. Eagle, a 65-year-old widower. After he died, she married Charlie Detamore, an orchard worker.
Various researchers and reporters visited and spoke to Buck later in her life. They reported that she was, in fact, of normal intelligence. Buck’s daughter Vivian was also of normal intelligence, according to her primary school report cards. However, this did not stop modern media from continuing to portray buck as intellectually disabled. In the film Against Her Will: The Carrie Buck Story, Marlee Matlin plays a fictional version of Buck who is still “feebleminded.”
At this time in US history, forced sterilization was not at all uncommon. It mostly happened to women, particularly Black and brown women. It often happened to the neurodivergent, the mentally ill, petty criminals, and sex workers. It almost always happened to the low-income.
Eugenics laws that were enacted starting in 1907 made this legal. While many of these laws are no longer on the books, forced sterilization is still technically allowed by the highest court in our nation, as Buck v. Bell has never been overturned. Carrie Buck matters because her case sets the current legal precedent for forced sterilization in the US. This means that, theoretically, none of us are safe from forced sterilization, even in this day and age.
The history of forced sterilization in the United States is horrifying. It’s also overwhelmingly sexist, racist, ableist, and classist. Here are some stomach-churning facts to give you an idea of how serious this has been:
- In the 1970s, about 40% of Indigenous women and 10% of Indigenous men in the US were forcibly sterilized. Many of these women fought back.
- Between the 1930s and 1970s, one-third of women in Puerto Rico were forcibly sterilized. These women fought back, too.
- During Eugenics, Black women are thought to have been sterilized “at three times the rate of white women, and at least twelve times the rate of white men.” Black eugenicists encouraged the voluntary sterilization of Black women.
- Between 1907 and 1963, over 64,000 people were forcibly sterilized.
We like to think of forced sterilization as something that no longer happens in the United States. Unfortunately, that is not true, and in a world where civil and human rights related to bodily autonomy are currently being eroded, we should be very, very concerned about this.
It’s happened as recently as 2018, to Summer Creel, who was told by a judge that she would receive a reduced sentence if she underwent the procedure.
California prisons have illegally sterilized women without informed consent as recently as 2010. Between 2006 and 2010, 148 women were given tubal ligations without approval from the health care board that exists in order to prevent coercion and abuse. Many women reported feeling bullied into the procedure or being misinformed about it.
In 2020, a whistleblower reported that Dr. Mahendra Ami, now referred to as the “Uterus Collector” had performed at least 20 hysterectomies on women in immigrant detention without their consent. Many of these women did not speak English well and did not understand what was going to be done to them, or what had been done to them.
Even wealthy and privileged Americans are still at risk– while we don’t use the term “feebleminded” anymore, once one has been placed into that category by a modern court, it is easy to lose one’s civil and human rights. Look at the case of Britney Spears’ abusive conservatorship as an example. Spears said that she was forbidden from removing her IUD while under the conservatorship. Even extremely powerful women like Spears can be placed in situations where their reproductive rights are restricted.
Reproductive freedom is an issue that should unite everyone– not just the disabled, not just the mentally ill, not just the poor, not just the BIPOC, and not just women. While forced sterilization has largely affected people with uteri, your vas deferens are not safe either! If you care about reproductive rights, now is a great time to pay attention.
Originally published on medium.com on May 28th, 2022.
Esoteric Epistemology 