I am happy to acknowledge LINK>Fannie Lou Hamer this Juneteenth. She rose from humble beginnings in the Mississippi Delta to become one of the most important, passionate, and powerful voices of the civil and voting rights movements and a leader in the efforts for greater economic opportunities for African Americans. She was a community organizer and vice-chair of the Freedom Democratic Party, which she represented at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. She went into the hospital to have a uterine tumor removed and was instead given a hysterectomy. The title of today’s blog comes from her having that experience. She died at only 59 years old.
I learned about her in a Time Magazine article by Alana Semuels LINK>How Women Get Pressured Into Long-Term Birth Control. In late 2020, news broke about an ACLU lawsuit related to LINK>Immigration Detention and Coerced Sterilization of Mexican woman. It was NOT the first time in US history that this happened. In 2021, the state of California compensated such women. Starting in the year 1909, women of Mexican descent were used as targets for the eugenics movement to reinforce population control and purity.
The Mirena IUD is mentioned. I once had an IUD during my adult journey into birth control but had to have it removed after a few months due to the pain it caused. Mine did not have the long lifespan of the new ones which came out in the 2000s. You can read the Time Magazine article at the link above.
Systemic racism and classism have a long history in US medicine. Even now, some doctors are pushing LARCs (Long Acting Reversible Contraceptives) on Black and Latina, as well as other lower-income women (especially those on Medicaid) coercing them into receiving these, sometimes even immediately after birthing a baby. According to Mieke Eeckhaut, a sociologist, “These ideas of who should and shouldn’t have children are still very much influencing our policies.”
Missing Mom 