The deaths of 28-year-old Josseli Barnica (2021) and 18-year-old Naveah Crain (2023) made headlines as preventable fatalities that occurred as a result of delayed medical care during miscarriages. Both Barnica and Crain sought medical treatment in their home state of Texas where an abortion ban has been in effect since 2021, criminalizing intervention when there is no proof of a detectable fetal heartbeat (Jaramillo & Surana; Presser & Surana). On June 24, 2022, the “U.S.” Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) when it argued that the Constitution did not protect a birthing parent’s right to an abortion. Following the Dobbs decision, several states doubled down on limiting reproductive rights. At the time of this article, 13 states have banned abortion outright and 8 more have severely restricted abortion (Choi & Cole). In post-Roe “U.S.,” reproductive decisions have been placed in the hands of lawmakers and prosecutors, putting birthing parents’ lives at greater risk. In Texas, where abortions have been banned since 2021*, the maternal mortality rate has risen by 56% between 2019 and 2022 (Edwards, Essamuah, & Kane).    

Using laws to control reproduction and limit bodily autonomy is not new. Neither is using science as a guise to legitimize racist, sexist, and anti-semitic policies. The so-called “United States” has a long history of doing both. While it is commonly known that during World War II, Nazi policy focused on eliminating “undesirables” to propagate a pure Aryan race, this view was not isolated to the Third Reich. Eugenics, the unethical pseudoscience that had its heyday from the 1880s to the 1950s, was a popular movement in the “U.S.” (Agtuca; Black; Manjeshwar). Adolf Hitler, in fact, looked to American eugenics laws as models and praised the American eugenics movement in his 1924 autobiography, Mein Kampf (Black; Ko). 

The biological determinism of the eugenics movement led to the state of Indiana passing the first sterilization law in 1907 giving institutions the right to sterilize marginalized populations deemed unfit to reproduce. Thirty-one other states passed similar laws (Stern). In 1927, Carrie Buck, a teen involuntarily institutionalized for “feeble-mindedness” filed suit after being sterilized upon giving birth to a child born out of wedlock. In the case of Buck v. Bell, the “U.S.” Supreme Court upheld a state’s right to force sterilization (Agtuca; Ko; Manjeshwar). This ruling, which still stands today, paved the way for state laws permitting the involuntary sterilization of marginalized people. 

After World War II, eugenics was prohibited under international law, but that did not end the efforts to control and limit reproductive rights in the “U.S.”  In 1970, Congress passed the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act, which, under the guise of “family planning,” federally funded sterilizations for low-income or uninsured families (Agtuca; Bolton & Unger; Knispel). 

When Dr. Connie Pinkerton-Uri, a physician of Cherokee and Choctaw descent, had a 26-year-old Indigenous woman come to her in 1972 requesting a “womb transplant” after having a hysterectomy at age 20, she realized something was amiss. Dr. Uri learned that the reason the young woman was sterilized without her informed consent was due to her alcoholism and the determination that she was unfit to parent her two children (“Woman; 442; Concerns of American Indian Women”). Dr. Uri started noticing a pattern among Indigenous women, which prompted her to investigate the sterilizations provided by Indian Health Services (IHS), a federal health care provider for Indigenous people in the “U.S.” Dr. Uri discovered one in four Indigenous women were coercively, forcibly, or unknowingly sterilized, and suggested that the IHS specifically targeted full-blooded Indigenous women (Bolton & Unger; Hoeman; “Woman; 442”). While the IHS provided a high number of sterilizations to the Native population since its inception in 1955, the number increased once the “U.S.” government-subsidized sterilizations per the 1970s act. On the Diné (“Navajo”) reservation alone, the number of sterilizations doubled between 1972 and 1978 (Knipsel). 

Under growing pressure from Indigenous women activists, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) conducted an investigation and confirmed that 3,406 sterilizations were performed between 1973 and 1976 (Rutecki). However, the GAO only investigated four of 12 IHS facilities, did not interview any of the women who had actually been sterilized, and overlooked sterilizations that were contracted out to non-IHS doctors. This incomplete report prompted additional investigation. Further independent research found that between 1970 and 1976, at least 25% of all Native women of childbearing age were sterilized, with some evidence pointing to a percentage as high as 50% (Bolton & Unger; Knipsel; Rutecki; Theobald).     

In 1977, Marie Sanchez, a Chief Judge of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe at the time and a founding member of the activist group Women of All Red Nations (WARN), addressed the United Nations in Geneva at the Conference on Indians in the Americas to bring attention to this “‘modern form’ of genocide” taking place in the “U.S.” (Bolton & Unger; Theobald). For Sanchez, forced sterilization of Indigenous women was part of a long history of colonialism and, ultimately, part of the government’s centuries-old attempt to eradicate the Indigenous population to gain control of land (Bolton & Unger; Theobald; “Woman; 442”). 

The westward expansion in the early 19th century led to the displacement of Indigenous people from their ancestral lands. As white settlers moved west, laws were enacted to forcibly remove Native people and relocate them to “reservations” (“Indian Reservations”). Through targeted attacks and the spread of disease, the Indigenous population dwindled. Infants and children were especially vulnerable and, on many reservations, “women responded by bearing more children despite their compromised health” (Theobald).    

At the same time, there was an effort to diminish access to traditional reproductive care. Before the Civil War (1861–1865), abortions and contraceptives were legal and most reproductive health care services were provided by female midwives, who were primarily Black, Indigenous, and white (Goodwin). But after slavery was abolished, white male gynecologists sought to exclude Black and Indigenous women from the field by advocating for midwifery bans and deeming midwifery  “a relic of barbarism” (Goodwin; “Impediments to Reproductive Justice”). This forced many birthing parents to seek reproductive care from hospitals and white male physicians (Goodwin). For the Indigenous population, “treaties signed before 1871, and executive orders and other agreements thereafter, established federal responsibility for the provision of health care for tribal members” (Theobald). As poor health conditions permeated reservations, the “U.S.” government set up hospitals to serve the Indigenous population. This growing reliance on non-traditional reproductive care offered to Indigenous people by federal government hospitals further removed them from their ancestral traditions. 

While efforts were being made to diminish the legitimacy of and access to traditional forms of reproductive care, the 19th-century assimilationist movement focused on “Americanizing” the Native youth through education. From 1860 to 1978, the “U.S” government funded Indian Boarding Schools for the explicit purpose of removing Native children from their land, language, and traditional customs. Conditions were often poor and Native children were susceptible to diseases like tuberculosis, measles, and flu. Without access to adequate food or medical care, many children died (Mejia).  

By the 1950s, most Indigenous birthing parents received reproductive care from the federally funded IHS hospitals (Theobald). The Civil Rights movement advocating for Black rights was growing momentum during this time. Since reproductive injustice has a pattern of aligning with civil rights advances in the “U.S.,” there was a renewed effort to control reproduction through sterilization practices. By this point, Native women had become more reliant on federally funded hospitals for childbirth. When the federal government started to reduce funds and eliminate services that primarily benefited Native populations, reservation hospitals started to dwindle and an already vulnerable population became even more vulnerable (Theobald). 

Marie Sanchez and other WARN activists saw reproductive injustice as another form of genocide. Their efforts along with the efforts of Black and Latina activists to call attention to the forced sterilization practices in marginalized communities led to new regulations in 1979 that, among other things, required healthcare providers to obtain patient consent before performing the procedure and increased wait time between consent and operation (Paz; Theobald).

The history of racism and sexism in the “U.S.” is pervasive and reproductive rights continue to make headlines. While activists’ efforts in the 1970s led to some wins, forced sterilization continues among marginalized people. Reproductive injustices persist for incarcerated populations in the “U.S.” In the 21st century, there have been reports of women in prison subject to sterilization without consent and birthing parents denied adequate reproductive care (“Impediments to Reproductive Justice”). In 2020, a nurse working at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center filed a whistleblower complaint alleging forced sterilizations were being performed on detained immigrant women (“Impediments to Reproductive Justice”; Manjeshwar).   

With renewed focus on reproductive rights as a result of the Dobbs decision, it is critical now to take an active part in advocating for justice. Reproductive justice is not a woman’s burden to bear. Reproductive rights are human rights. And the fight for them is all the more important when the humanity of certain people is continuously questioned.