Love Medicine

Love Medicine
Detail of beadwork from an Ojibwe medicine pouch

Friday, April 3, 2009

Fored Sterilization

It is shocking that the United States was able to allow States to pass forced sterilization laws for nearly 80 years. Even though forced sterilization violates the 8th Amendment AND it was applied to States in 1962, this form of punishment was continued until the early 1980's.
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6 comments:

jmartinez said...

The govt can pretty much get away with whatever they want, they'll just cover up whatever needs to be taken care of. been happening since the country was founded.

April 3, 2009 at 9:40 AM
Unknown said...

That's crazy to believe that actually went on. To some extent i can understand why maybe the Government wouldn't want people with special needs to have kids, and for them to be sterilized for the child's sake, but no matter what, it is still the person's deciison who is getting sterilized. Although many couples in the U.S choose to get these operations, if the person does not consent to this, then it should be their right, its ridiculous that they went behind peoples backs to secretly perform these operations.

April 3, 2009 at 1:09 PM
Unknown said...

Jacob, you may be right, but usually people will file cases against the States in federal court for things like this, and some did, but the people they were doing this to were either mentally handicapped or convicted of sex crimes. The people they were sterilizing needed other people to stand up for them, and no one did, which surprises me. Think about the Canadian lawyer who is fighting for all those people who were in Indian Boarding Schools.

April 3, 2009 at 2:23 PM
Mister Dee said...

Having mentally retarded people sterilized is rather redundant, because one of the signs of manic depression is loss of sexual appetite.

April 3, 2009 at 7:31 PM
Jessica Deckard said...

Lex - mental retardation and manic depression are two very different things. The sorts of mental retardation the article refers to are Downs' Syndrome, low IQ, people who function at a very low level and have to be institutionalized. Manic depressives have a psychiatric disorder, so aren't "retarded" as you post implies. But yes, manic depressives were sometimes institutionalized and thus sterilized w/o their knowledge in some cases. And manic depression is different from depression - a sign of depression is a loss of sex drive, yes, but a sign of mania (necessary for the "manic" part of manic depression) is elevated sex drive.

April 4, 2009 at 11:09 AM
alexlawhon said...

The government always has gotten away with stuff. Like in 9th grade biology when we learned that in alabama they gave African Americans Clamidia without their knowledge, just to study it.

April 5, 2009 at 9:27 PM

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