Essay - Forced Sterilization Practically Since the Dawn of Civilization, Cultures Have...

Forced sterilization

Practically since the dawn of civilization, cultures have used a v*****riety of barbaric methods in government-sanctioned and unsanctioned attempts to suppress the populations of minority groups. Everything from genocide to inter-breeding has been used ***** minimize ***** growth and strengthening of people who were viewed as troublesome because of their ethnicities, religions, or other re*****ons. One brutal method of population suppression that has received inconsistent attention is the forced or coerced ***** of women. Many countries, at some point or an***** in their histories, ***** *****stituted policies of surgically preventing certain types of ***** from reproducing. ***** modern example was a policy of forced sterilization implemented by the United States government, particularly during the 1970s, to control the growth of poor Native American **********. Even more recently, many women from gypsy populations -- also known as Roma -- have alleged that they were forced or coerced into sterilization procedures, often told such measures were necessary to save their lives. The United Nations is currently investigating several allegedly ***** *****s of Roma women in the former Czechoslovakia, which split into ***** Czech Republic and Slovakia after the fall of communism. The sterilizations ***** ***** American and Roma women both represent instances of government-sponsored racism that deprived women of their reproductive rights and attempted to rob minority cultures of their futures.

Sterilization and Native ***** *****

The ***** of forced sterilization in the United States was designed, accord*****g to Linda M. Woolf, to improve the country's gene pool by eliminating reproductive ***** of people who ***** seen as mentally, physically or sociologically unfit ***** a science known as eugenics (Woolf). Up until World War II, eugenics ***** part of standard academic instruction at ***** Western medical schools, and poverty -- an affliction of many Native Americans -- was seen as a sign of feeble-mindedness, which needed to be controlled through eugenics (Gejman ***** Weilbaecher). At one point in the 20th century, the majority of states were carrying out ***** sterilizations -- ***** with significant intellectual disabilities could ***** sterilized in 35 states -- and forced sterilization ***** even upheld in a 1927 U.S. Supreme Court decision (Woolf). In short, ***** forced sterilization of Native American women in the United States occurred under a legally permitted policy of allowing females from socially undesirable ***** to be targeted. According to birth control expert Lilith Mill, more than 70,000 ***** ***** sterilized against *****ir will during the ***** century (Mill). Because of ***** high rates of poverty, alcoholism ***** drug addiction among certain Native American *****, women ***** ***** tribes fit the bill as socially undesirable.

The sterilization of Native ***** ***** was carried out as a semi-covert, government-funded pl*****n, with the surgeries commonly performed by the *****dian Health Service. According to Bruce E. Johansen, a professor in Native American Studies at ***** University of Nebraska at Omaha, many Native American women who came to IHS for procedures as r*****ine ***** tonsillectomies had their tubes tied or ovaries removed, often after being told