(TW: Forced Sterilization and Rape)
Elaine Riddick was 13 years old when she got pregnant after being raped by a neighbor in Winfall, N.C., in 1967. The state ordered that immediately after giving birth, she should be sterilized. Doctors cut and tied off her fallopian tubes.
Riddick was never told what was happening. “Got to the hospital and they put me in a room and that’s all I remember, that’s all I remember,” she said. “When I woke up, I woke up with bandages on my stomach.”
Her records reveal that a five-person state eugenics board in Raleigh had approved a recommendation that she be sterilized. North Carolina was one of 31 states to have a government run eugenics program. By the 1960s, tens of thousands of Americans were sterilized as a result of these programs.
To read more about this story, click here. Dr. Nancy Snyderman’s full broadcast report, ‘State of Shame’, airs Monday, November 7, at 10pm/9c on NBC’s Rock Center with Brian Williams.
holy fuck.
RAGE.
I recently started learning about the history of eugenics and the correlation between the history of birth control in America. It’s some freaky fucking shit I tell you, full of examples of the classism, racism, and ableism rampant in society. How convenient that only poor people/people of color/mentally disabled people were sterilized! /sarcasm/
P.S. If I remember correctly IQ tests were originally used to determine if someone was “feeble-minded” enough to be sterilized.
