Daily Archives: February 20, 2021

Between 1927 and 1979, more than 8,000 people were involuntarily sterilized in five hospitals across Virginia. They were a result of the 1924 Sterilization Act, affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court three years later. Rather than the misguided initiative of well-meaning men of the day, the states eugenics program was many things: a manifestation of white supremacy, a form of employment insurance, a means of controlling troublesome women, and a philosophy that helped remove poor people from valuable land.

When author and historian Elizabeth Catte researched her new book Pure America: Eugenics and the Making of Modern Virginia, she realized just how much eugenic sterilization in Virginia had been used as a method of control. Despite its purported reason, which used language about what it termed hereditary defectives, the law arrived at a moment when powerful people were attempting to steer the state toward a more modern version of itself.

The problem is that these powerful people didnt want a complete break from the past, she explains, citing how those in power wanted to preserve a society that condemned Black people as biologically inferior where power followed bloodlines and women were relegated to subordinates. Eugenics allowed these older beliefs to feel modern and scientifically validated. Cattes book is the subject of her upcoming online talk at the Library of Virginia.

Under Virginias Sterilization Act, the state ordered the sterilization of anyone committed to a state institution who was deemed a mental defective, as well as people afflicted with hereditary forms of insanity that are recurrent, idiocy, imbecility, feeble-mindedness or epilepsy. This criteria cast an intentionally large net over the states residents, while the umbrella of feeble-mindedness was often applied to unwed mothers, teenage runaways and the poor.

What surprised Catte most, after extensive research at the Library of Virginia and the University of Virginia Special Collections, was that sterilization in Virginia wasnt just a method employed to prevent future births. It also functioned like a kind of employment insurance, particularly when it came to young women. If unable to become pregnant, the thinking went, these young women would be better suited to serve as menial workers. Families in Virginia could apply to state hospitals to receive sterilized young women as domestic workers and be assured that pregnancy wouldnt interrupt their employment or create a potential scandal.

Eugenic sterilization was practiced at all five of Virginias state psychiatric facilities: Eastern State, Western State, Southwestern State, the former Lynchburg State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-minded and Central State, the only facility for Black patients at the time. In the early 20th century, the patient populations began to grow exponentially because the countrys population was also growing, lifespans were getting longer and local communities had begun to chafe at the expenses they incurred helping the elderly, poor or disabled survive.

Growth of patients meant growth of the hospitals physical environments as well, including large agricultural operations needed to supply food and other commodities for the hospitals. Although eugenic sterilization was seen as a means to decrease patient populations, the reality was that didnt happen.

The book makes a case for the states eugenics program having contributed to the inequalities of today. One example among many is the fact that its legal today for employers to pay disabled workers less than minimum wage and to base their compensation on perceived productivity, Catte explains. Its still perfectly legal for an employer to compare a disabled workers productivity to their nondisabled coworker and adjust the disabled workers wage down accordingly.

In Virginias eugenics era, state leaders used mathematical formulas to determine how much labor could be extracted from its unfit residents as a public good.

Its hard not to see the shadow of those ideas today in debates about work requirements, public assistance and how unproductive people must earn back their right to survive.

The legacy of eugenic sterilization programs can also be felt today in the reluctance on the part of some people of color to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.

What I can say in the context of my work is that eugenic beliefs did sometimes translate into unethical medical experiments, perhaps most notoriously in the Tuskegee syphilis study, which was masterminded by eugenicists trained at the University of Virginia, Catte says. But those connections are only a small facet of the larger story of medical racism in the United States.

Author Elizabeth Catte presents a virtual talk Pure America: Eugenics and the Making of Modern Virginia, at the Library of Virginia on Thursday, Feb. 25, at 6 p.m. Register at lva.virginia.gov.

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Defective History | Arts and Culture - Style Weekly

A recently released study finds that Europe has reduced the number of babies born with Down syndrome by 54 percent. In 2016, the same researchers found that the US rate of Down syndrome births had declined by 33 percent. Some friends and colleagues have asked me whether such reductions, which entail prenatal diagnosis and electivepregnancytermination, mean that we are still practicing some form of eugenics.

Down syndrome is a genetic disorder usually associated with an extra copy of chromosome 21 hence its other name, trisomy-21. Children with Down syndrome generally exhibit growth delays, reducedintelligence, and a shortened life span of around 60 years. The risk of having a baby with Down syndrome increases with parental age. When prenatal testing reveals the diagnosis, some parents, including apparently many in Europe and the US, elect to terminate the pregnancy.

The widely-shared belief that people with Down syndrome cannot have children is mistaken. Fertility rates across the board for individuals with Down syndrome are lower and much lower in men than in women but babies have been born to both fathers and mothers with the condition. Unless efforts are made to reduce the risk, such as prenatal testing and selective pregnancy termination, about 50 percent of babies born to a Down syndrome parent will have it.

Having the disorder carries many health consequences. On average, adults with Down syndrome have the mental ability of an 8-year-old, and later in life the risk ofdementiais greatly increased. The condition also increases the risk of conditions such assleep apnea, spinal cord injury, thyroid problems, heart disease, leukemia, and even diseases of the teeth and gums.

Yet some people with Down syndrome have earned university degrees, performed on multiple instruments at Carnegie Hall, designed successful fashion collections, served in public office, won awards for playwriting and acting, and, as recently as November of last year, completed the Ironman triathlon.

In 2017, a Special Olympian testified before Congress,

I am not a research scientist. However, no one knows more about life with Down syndrome than I do. I am a man with Down syndrome and my life is worth living. I completely understand that people pushing this particular final solution are saying that people like me should not exist. But seriously, I have a great life!

Eugenics

The Greek roots of eugenics simply mean well born, and adherents believe that humanity can be biologically enhanced by controlling reproduction. Francis Galton, who coined the term, intended it to refer to all agencies under human control which can impair or improve the racial quality of future generations. The use of the termracialshould not be ignored, as many eugenicists have also held racist views. A century ago, eugenics programs focused onmarriageprohibitions and forced sterilisation.

The first sterilisation law was passed in the state of Indiana in 1907. Along with confirmed criminals and rapists, it targeted idiots and imbeciles. As amended in 1927, it eliminated criminals, focusing instead on the insane, feeble minded, and epileptic. The law specified that two surgeons should examine each case, and if they determined that sterilisation would benefit society, they were authorised to proceed.

Between the Indiana laws enactment and its 1974 repeal, about 2,500 people were sterilised, including roughly equal numbers of women and men. People who supported the law at the time saw it as another means to reduce disease and poverty, helping to ensure that high birth rates among the unfit did not impose an undue burden on society.

Such policies took an even more sinister turn in Nazi Germany. Initially, programs focused on segregating, institutionalizing, and sterilizing the mentally ill and physically and mentally disabled, but the program progressed to systematic killing with poison gas, paving the way for extermination programs targeting homosexuals and racial groups such as Jews and Roma.

No one should underestimate the complexity and difficulty of deciding whether to test for Down syndrome or terminate a pregnancy. A host of considerations are often involved, such as family circumstances, socioeconomic status, and religious affiliation. Some people are relatively well-equipped to welcome a Down syndrome child into their family, while others are not. Those grappling with such choices often suffer mightily.

Yet those who opt to test and decide to terminate should be clear on one thing: They are tinkering with who is born and who isnt, and they are doing so based ongenes. My wife and I faced a similar choice when we had a child in our 40s, electing not to test. In some cases of Down syndrome, such a life would have been marked by severe disability and early death, but in other cases, the outcome might have been quite different.

The point is not that parents facing perhaps the most difficult decision of their lives should be branded eugenicists, but simply to indicate that despite protests to the contrary, eugenics has not been fully consigned to historys dustbin. As a society, we are still deciding who is and is not born based on genes, and the decisions we make shape humanity not just into the next generation, but generations to come.

This article has been republished, with the authors permission, from Psychology Today.

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Yes, eliminating people with Down syndrome really is a kind of eugenics MercatorNet - MercatorNet

Rubel Shelly| The Daily Herald

Some people question the need for a month-long focus on African American history.

If were going to have every February as Black History Month, when do we get a White History Month?

That one is easy enough to answer: Until recently, American history has been written in terms of white culture. When a Black figure made it onto the page, it was in relation to a white person or white institution. Black History Month helps fill some of the abysmal gaps in our history by introducing names, events, and institutions that have been excluded from the record.

What have any of them done that merits being in history books? That my kids need to know their names?

While that one smacks of outright racism,let me give a forthright answer: It seems that people as white as I am tend to know a smaller percentage of Black historical figures than a similar list of Caucasian figures in history. What do you know about, for example, Dorothy Johnson Vaughan or Mark Dean?

Vaughan (1910-2008) was a skilled mathematician whose work was critical to NASA and figured prominently in the mission that launched John Glenn into space. When she was hired to help with the space program, she and her African American colleagues had to eat and use bathroom facilities in segregated areas. Her story is told in a 2016 book and film titled Hidden Figures.

Dean, born in 1956, has long been recognized as one of IBM Corporations most eminent engineers. In the early 1980s, he and a colleague developed a system that allows computers to communicate with printers and other devices. I am indebted to him.

Then what about Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Madame C.J. Walker, W.E.B. Du Bois, Billie Holiday, Thurgood Marshall, Vivien Thomas, Dizzy Gillespie, Henrietta Lacks, Rosa Parks, Fred Gray, Jackie Robinson, Toni Morrisonor John Lewis? My point is simply that beyond Martin Luther King Jr. or Oprah, people over 50 dont know much about Black history. Black History Month will help our children and grandchildren do better with these names.

Weve had the Civil Rights Movement now, and weve passed laws to correct all those things. Why cant they just move on?

That one, when put into words, doesnt really need an answer.

My personal sensitivity to this issue has been heightened since I began to notice reactions to my opening-day lecture in Medical Ethics Class. As I begin to explain the need for serious ethical reflection in medicine, I cite a couple of egregious examples of unethical events.

I start with the notorious Nazi practices. Physicians and nurses killed off deformed children, mentally ill adults, elderly personsand minority populations. They also performed gruesome experiments on healthy prisoners. They froze Jews to death to gather information on hypothermia. Poles and Slavs were deprived of oxygen in depressurizing experiments for the Luftwaffe. They sterilized inferior women. They created the pseudo-science of eugenics.

Once students are thoroughly indignant over such atrocities in Europe, I introduce a close-to-home event that shows that Americans have not been above ethical reproach. So I ask, How many of you know about the Tuskegee Syphilis Study?

Every person of color raises his or her hand. Typically, only about 20%of white students have heard of it. Six hundred men 399 with syphilis and 201 as a control group were studied for bad blood from 1932 until 1972. All were Black. Penicillin was discovered to be specific for treating syphilis in 1947. Not one person in the group was offered penicillin between 1947 and 1972, when Jean Heller exposed what had been going on.

If you dont know about Tuskegee, Google it. It will help you understand why Black people lack a great deal of eagerness over the COVID-19 vaccine.

It will help you understand why we need Black History Month.

Rubel Shelly is a philosopher-theologian, who writes regular columns forThe Daily Herald.

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Rubel Shelly: Why we need the education of Black History Month - Columbia Daily Herald

Filmed over a seven-year period, filmmaker Erika Cohns harrowing documentary Belly of the Beast (2020) is an eye-opening story of injustice at the Central California Womens Facility in Chowchilla, California. Its the largest female correctional facility in the United States and the only such facility in California with a death row for women. Its also a place where inmate Kelli Dillon, serving a 15-year prison sentence, fell victim to a forced (and unnecessary) hysterectomy, a case that led to a fierce legal battle by activist lawyer Cynthia Chandler and her organization, Justice Now. In recounting the story, the documentary reveals the insidious practice of a modern-day eugenics program that primarily targets women of color.

Cohns film delves into the sordid history through archival interviews with female prisoners, newscasts, and more to expose the history and practice of forced sterilization in womens prisons and other crimes, including sexual assaults, and human rights violations. Cohn discusses Belly of the Beast as part of the Center for Contemporary Arts (1050 Old Pecos Trail, 505-982-1338, ccasantafe.org) virtual Living Room Series at 7 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 19, via Zoom.

Joining Cohn is human rights activist Selinda Guerrero of the advocacy group Millions for Prisoners New Mexico

(facebook.com/MillionsforPrisonersNM), a chapter of Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, whose goal is to unionize prison workers and abolish the exploitation of prisoners. Also participating is Isabella Baker of Forward Together Action (forwardtogetheraction.org), which advocates for the rights of women of color, nonbinary people, and Indigenous communities.

The event is presented by Santa Fe NOW (nowsantafe.org), the local chapter of the National Organization for Women.

The link to register is on CCAs website (ccasantafe.org). The cost is $10 and registrants will receive links via email to join the Zoom meeting and view the documentary.

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Detrimental detentions: "Belly of the Beast" | Movies | santafenewmexican.com - Santa Fe New Mexican

PANDEMICS CAN have unexpected side-effects. One of them, according to a report last year by the New York Federal Reserve, may be a surge in support for extremist ideas. It observed how cities in Germany that suffered the most deaths from influenza by 1920 then voted in unusually large numbers for extreme-right parties, such as the Nazis, by the early 1930s. In the past year, too, according to studies in Britain and America, there has been a spurt in online searches for extremist content. Anger over lockdowns or loss of trust in government could be driving new interest.

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What texts might people be turning to? Researchers study literary habits of the far-right by monitoring reading lists traded on social media, texts promoted on podcasts or recited by enthusiasts as audiobooks on YouTube, output from right-fringe publishing houses and, most extreme, the diatribes that serve as manifestos of those who commit atrocities. Together they suggest several strands of hateful writing. Brian Hughes of American University in Washington, DC says that the sheer availability of online extremist ideology is, in part, responsible for the elevated rates of extremist mobilisation.

French writers have been strikingly influential, including those in the Nouvelle Droite movement. Alain de Benoist, an illiberal thinker, inspired members of Americas alt right such as Richard Spencer, a white supremacist. The works of a philosopher, Jean Renaud Gabriel Camus, also stand out. Ideas drawn from his book The Great Replacement (2011), are often repeated by those who say non-white immigration threatens Western countries. The book has been cited by mass shooters.

The work of another French writer, Jean Raspail, is championed by anti-immigrant activists in America. His dystopian novel from 1973, The Camp of the Saints, imagines the violent overrun of France by brown-skinned migrants. It is a weaponised retelling of an apocalyptic biblical parable, says Chelsea Stieber of Catholic University. The French understand it as literature, she says, whereas in America it gets to be this reality that could happen. Leading Republicans have promoted it, she points out, including Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, both erstwhile close advisers of Donald Trump, as well as Steve King, a noxious ex-congressman from Iowa.

Apocalyptic writing is especially popular among a strand of the far-right known as accelerationists, meaning those who believe civilisation (or at least liberal democracy) will soon collapse. They hope the end can be hastened by violent acts or even civil war. In this vein an Italian fascist writer, Julius Evola, is also cited by Mr Bannon and Mr Spencer and lauded in far-right circles, along with his call for blowing everything up. He promoted an idea of heroic men who rise above history (Mussolini was a fan). Memes of him in his monocle are shared online by adoring followers.

Extremists turn to such writers because they justify using violence to clear the way for a supposed new golden age to begin. Others tell them how to achieve that. Siege, a book by James Mason of the American Nazi party, purports to be a guide to violent revolution. It had little impact when it was published in 1992, notes Graham Macklin of the Centre for Research on Extremism, in Oslo. But its rediscovery by neo-Nazis roughly five years ago has led to a surge of interest. PDFs of it are now shared widely online; the hashtag readSiege spreads periodically on social media. Now, its everywhere, he says.

The study of such writing matters, even if one researcher admits he feels like projectile vomiting while tackling some especially violent or cruel texts. Ideas can have deadly consequences, says Joanna Mendelson of the Anti-Defamation League. People are quoting and referencing books as a kind of reassurance that they are validated in their extremist views, she says. Many of the same ones reappear repeatedly among anti-Semitic and other extremist factions. A few, such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (an anti-Semitic conspiracy originating from Russia in 1903), or the racist, eugenics-based writing of Lothrop Stoddard in the 1920s, are repeatedly rediscovered or reinterpreted by new writers. What used to be called eugenics, for example, is today dressed up as race realism.

One book is still considered the bible of the far right. The Turner Diaries, a barely readable novel from the 1970s by William Pierce, another American Nazi, imagines an insurrection by a group called Order against a government that promotes egalitarian values and gun control. It has supposedly sold 500,000 copies. One avid reader was Timothy McVeigh, who bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people. (He used a lorry full of fertiliser and explosives, a method depicted in the novel.) Others were inspired to form a real-world paramilitary group, also called the Order.

Jared Holt, who researches domestic extremism at the Atlantic Council in Washington, says such books are still powerful. Veteran members of groups pass them on to younger ones. They are used to build ties between adherents, to test new initiates and ease the anxiety of some by giving a sense of purpose to their lives. He notes, too, how younger readers are finding new writing. One rambling, self-published book called Bronze Age Mindset, for example, has won a cult following, reportedly including staffers at Mr Trumps White House. It draws on ideas from Nietzsche and tells readers to prepare for the military rule that will soon begin in America. For some readers such bilious writing is appealing. Finding out why is a first step towards confronting it.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "Deadly inspirations"

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Deadly inspirations - What their chosen reading says about America's far-right | United States - The Economist

Allison Siegelman| Erie Times-News

U.S. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has been responsible for circulating wacky QAnon conspiracy theories that have dark, satanic themes that are reminiscent of those believed in ancient times. She and those associated with alt-right and QAnon groups target the Jewish people in the same way the Nazi Party did: They spread stump rhetoric, written propaganda and images all weaving the fiction with horrifying false characterizations and conspiracies about how the country is being destroyed by people amongst us.

What is most concerning is that Holocaust revisionism and denial has been embraced by some in academics with an agenda. It is so extreme that the genocide of 6 million Jews (along with many other minorities) throughout Europe is being questioned, especially by the younger generations who did not live through World War II.

We are in times that leaveus with few of those who lived through the WWII period. The elders today are mostly those who were babies to toddlers at the time of the war. Soon, they, too, will be gone. History has recorded in video and text the wars atrocities as they occurred and retrospectives. These archives have been maintained in Holocaust museums in Israeland the U.S., along with the U.N., and many other government archives, museums and archival organizations.

Todays conspiracists who wish to diminish or discredit the history preserved through videos, publications and testimonials of the millions who lived through that time are attempting to erase the Holocaust, and for what purpose? It appears to be a radical political agendaor delusions from mental illness that are responsible.

The hatemongers are attracted to provincialism. They are willing to use any tactic to keep America from being a diverse democratized nation that today offers humans of all races, religions, ethnicities, genders and sexual persuasions freedom from persecution and oppression.

However, the U.S. has a jaded past that is filled with slavery, racism and segregation. It is no surprise that our nation birthed a movement in the late 1800s, known as eugenics, that led to the sterilization of over 64,000 disabled or impoverished (mostly of dark-skinned) Americans. Hitler and the Nazi Party subscribed to this ideology disguised at the time as science. The desire to propagate a superior race lead to the insanity of the 20th century Holocaust which is still recorded as the worst genocide in history it eliminated two-thirds (67%) of the worlds Jewish population, or 6 million Jews.

Genocide is the deliberate killing of a people with the intent of eliminating them from existence.

The Jewish people had endured many battles and oppression since their tribal identity was created by the father of monotheism (the belief in one God), Abraham. It was Hitlers Nazi fascism that targeted death to all Jews throughout the world not just to drive them out of a land. The Nazi Party was able to formulate conspiracy theories that relied on demonizing Jews bycirculating tales of Jews plotting to deceive and destroy the non-Jewish population. They played on arousing fear in a demographic group who were provincial, gullibleand eager to find a scapegoat for the ills of their nation.

Today, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and those like her are doing exactly the same thing. These extremists are looking to instill fear and anger in Americans who see anyone other than white and Christian as a threat to the U.S. They wrap their falsehoods with patriotism and glorify the quest to attack the Jews as if Jews are not trustworthy and upstanding citizens.

Ironically, those who participate in such defamation can be seen as the real enemy of a democratized nation. Those who remain indifferent or dismissive of the trend in radicalized American patriotism and the militia cells that we today call domestic terrorism are as much to blame for the threat to our nation.

If we are to survive as a democracy, we must put party politics aside and look to history for an understanding of what gave rise to democracy. George Santayanas iconic words spoken in 1905 could not be more relevant, Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it. It was in 1948 before the British House of Commons upon the end of WWII that Winston Churchill revised the quote as, Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it. I ask that we, as Americans, embrace the most basic tenet of democracy to avoid a horrific slide into fascism and worse: immorality.

Allison Siegelman of York Township is a member of Central PA American Israel Public Affairs.

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QAnon and the alt-right draw from the Nazi playbook - GoErie.com

By Sally Kim, Lisbeth Martine, Alex Morgan, Esha Kher

CALIFORNIA Belly of the Beast, a groundbreaking film by Ericka Cohn, was virtually screened by If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice this past week, exposing patterns of illegal sterilizations, modern-day eugenics and reproductive injustice in California prisons.

This was filmed over the course of 10 years and put together within seven. The film covers the story of a woman who was involuntarily sterilized at a facility, who then teamed up with a lawyer to stop the reproductive and human rights violations occurring in California.

A statewide investigation to uncover the crimes targeted against women of color and the inadequate healthcare provided to sexual assault and illegal sterilization causes was conducted. The film includes intimate accounts from formerly incarcerated women in one of the largest womens prisons in the world.

In speaking to the difficulties of gaining access to prison staff and people in the prison system who were able to come forward to expose sterilizations, Cohn recounts an instance where a nurse at an immigration detention center trying to expose illegal mass hysterectomies faced retaliation every step of the way and had a fear of losing pensions or facing retaliation for coming forward.

Cohn was overwhelmed by the reach and impact the film had among prisons. She knew that it had to reach people in California womens prisons across the country, but we had no idea that it would be reaching people in mens prisons, in federal prisons.

She said it took a lot of people to shine a light on this issue and coalition building was of the utmost importanceyou have the journalism reporting aspect, the legal advocates, the survivors who are doing the peer to peer human rights documentation work inside prison.

(C)ross collaboration pushes this momentum forward so that there is accountability so that these human rights abuses dont continue to happen, added Cohn. We have the CA Latinos for reproductive justice collaborating with the CA coalition for women prisons collaborating with the disability rights and education defense fund collaborating with our filmmaking team.

Cohn touches on the relationship between lack of educational resources and informed consent among prisoners, explaining when someone is in prison, they dont have access to Google like we do, and their only sources of information are doctors.

And since in prison, the doctors are employed by the prison theres no separation, you dont get access to someone who is unaffiliated with the prison. Its near impossible to obtain informed consent, she said.

The doctors do not ethically or morally question all of this, and allow the procedure to take place. Although these procedures did not take place at the prison, sterilization procedures need a lot of approval to have women go to an outside contracted facility, Cohn noted, and these hospitals and medical care are complicit in it.

Kate Panze, hosting the virtual screening, noted that this film depicts how illegal it is, as well as an ongoing issue. After the screening, the films director joined to answer a Q&A regarding the content of the documentary.

This film will be both difficult to watch and inspiring, Panze stressed.

Kelli Dillon, a main protagonist in the documentary, was given 15 years in prison at the age of 19 for shooting and killing her husband. Dillon shares that the hardest part when taken into custody was being separated from her children, even though she was acting out of protection as a victim of domestic violence.

The worst was yet to come when she was imprisoned at the worlds largest womens prison located in Central California.

A few years after being imprisoned, Dillon began to experience symptoms like abdominal pain. Dillon asserts that she was told she had an abnormal pap smear, resulting in her needing a cone biopsy in order to see if there are signs of cancer.

Do you want any more children? doctors asked her. Dillon responded yes because she was looking forward to forming part of a healthy relationship and raising more children, because she felt that her sentence had robbed her from having that chance.

Doctors proceeded to get Dillons consent to have a hysterectomy only if cancer was found.

When I came out I felt like something was wrong, she said, and added she asked her doctor if she could still have children and he responded, Yeah, I dont see why not.

Cynthia Chandler, justice attorney and founder of Justice Now, says that she was receiving letters from an overwhelming number of prisoners every month about the horrible medical abuses taking place with prison. At Justice Now, they had received a letter from Kelli Dillon that they deemed very troubling.

Nine months after surgery, Dillon had begun to feel surgical menopause symptoms, such as late periods, heart palpitations, and severe weight loss.

After being advised to ask for her medical records, Chandler and Dillon found out that she was lied to and intentionally sterilized after agreeing to have a hysterectomy only if she had cancer. And Dillon did not have cancer.

According to Chandler, women prisons in California have had a horrific track record of medical care. For instance, Dillon began noticing while she was imprisoned that other women were having the same symptoms as herself after having the same surgery she was told to have. Many women were given different diagnoses, and all of them were sterilized without their consent.

Dillon became the first sterilization victim to sue for damages, holding the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) accountable. The trial hearing was in front of a predominantly white jury, and they believed the doctors versions of events.

I was looking at these documents that were confirming that as a black woman, my lifedidnt mean anything, it had no purpose, Kelli exclaimed.

According to Chandler, federal and state laws prohibit sterilizing people in prison for the purpose of birth control. However, the prison system was still doing it anyway, especially after women inmates go into labor and delivery during their imprisonment.

In California, the state was in a league of its own when it comes to eugenics during modern-day. A report documents that 20,000 people were sterilized in the state, more than any other state in the country.

It became evident that sterilization was used as a form of birth control on women of color in order to drop the number of minority populations.

Women inmates share that doctors were very unprofessional and unsanitary when it came to treating pregnant patients. In addition, there were doctors that would become insistent on women using sterilization as a form of birth control if they had returned to prison pregnant for a second time.

Between 2006 and 2010, about 150 women were illegally sterilized by being pressured by doctors into tubal ligations while being heavily sedated on the operating table.

The fact that we are in the 21st century and we have to ask our state auditor to see if women in California are being coercively sterilized is revolting, exclaimed Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson.

The Department of Corrections and the Receivers (appointed and responsible for managing all medical programs and their related costs) claimed that usually there was very little personal knowledge on the part of prison administrators of what was going on.

Its my understanding that many of these did have some kind of consent at the outside doctor because these procedures are performed in a community facility just so that its clear. They are not performed at the institution, said Kathleen Allison of CDCR.

Joyce Hayhoe of the California Prison Health Care Services explained how doctors statewide felt for whatever reason that it was being sanctioned by the department.

Clark Kelso, a federal Receiver, said there may be doctors who arent aware of the policy or the federal law issue, noting, I can well imagine an outside physician in good faith thinking that this is a matter of reproductive autonomy, not knowing about the conversation that has been going on about the inability to give valid consent in prison.

For inmates to sign consent is a really big deal because they are seen as a ward of the court and not really being allowed to enter into contracts.

There shouldve been a red flag when the billing department received those bills but, Kelso continued, explaining that when he entered the Receivership in 2008 they did not use standard medical billing codes so there was no easy way for them to know they were paying for these surgeries.

This explanation was not believable, because all the documents and paperwork that go into medical procedures are expansive, as a former OB nurse attested to the fact that everything went through a committee and was documented as to why it was necessary.

By the time Dr. Heinrich was hired, sterilization practices had been going on for years at multiple prisons. He strongly believed that there were women who were gaming the system and needed to be stopped.

This attitude tracked precisely to the historical attitude of the California leaders of the eugenics movementthey had always used cost benefit as justification for why they were doing what they were doing.

Senator Jackson attended Dillons hearing even though she wasnt even on the committee.

She explained how sterilization has been illegal since 1979 and many assumed it had ended at that time. Her new bill, SB 1135, was to make it very clear that doctors cannot perform these procedures in prison because even nurses were not aware they were illegal.

At the time Dillon was imprisoned, she had less than a year left to obtain her Associates Degree for Social Studies. She wanted to work with battered women and troubled young teen girls.

Dillon appeared on a radio show called The Dialogue, where it was revealed that 92 percent of women are in prison for domestic violence.

Kelli explained on the show that she had already been sexually assaulted and held hostage at home for three days and beaten. Yet, when she called the police, their response was, You dont look like a victim.

The American College Of Obstetricians and Gynecologists opposed the bill because they believed by completely taking away sterilization, they are taking away womens right to consent to a procedure.

This was a surprise because very few of their members, let alone their leadership, work in prisons. Their opposition created a tremendous obstacle for this bill.

Prisoners have said that asking people in prison to make a decision like Dillons is not the best idea because people have total control over them and if they dont follow the rule or anybody simply says they didnt, they can have time added to their sentence.

Dillon testified in front of the Assembly Health Committee after the bill had stalled. If it passed the committee, it would go to the Assembly floor and, if it passed that, to the governors desk.

Dillon delivered an emotional and deeply touching testimony, pleading, I trusted the surgeons to respect and to acknowledge that I still had a future and that I wanted one.

She further asked, Did this happen to me because I was African American? Because I was a woman? Because I was an inmate? Or did it happen to me because I was all three?

She said that this bill will help to protect other women who have the opportunity to be rehabilitated and to actually restore the quality of their lives and to enjoy the gift that life has to offer, which includes motherhood and having children.

The film ends as every committee member said aye in support of the bill. Governor Jerry Brown signed and passed SB 1135 with bipartisan support, bringing an end to forced prison sterilization.

Sally Kim is a senior at UCLA, majoring in Sociology. She is from the East Bay Area.

Lisbeth Martinez is a third year at UC Davis, double majoring in Communication and Political Science. She currently lives in Shafter, California.

Alex Morgan is a 3rd year Political Science Major at Westmont College. She is originally from Santa Barbara, California

Esha Kher is an undergraduate student at UC Davis studying Political Science and Computer Science, hoping to pursue a career in corporate law. She is passionate about legal journalism and political advocacy that provokes new perspectives and sparks conversation among the public. When she is not reporting for The Davis Vanguard, Esha is either trying out a new YouTube workout or reading a book on late modern philosophy.

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'Belly of the Beast' Film Highlights Ongoing Issue of Illegal Sterilization in CA State Prisons - The Peoples Vanguard of Davis

media release: The Aldo Leopold Foundation is pleased to present a series of free, virtual events for Leopold Week 2021: Building an Ethic of Care! The events in this series are free, but spots are limited. Dont miss your chance to join the celebrationsand register to secure your spot today.

March 10:

An ongoing reckoning with race in American history has drawn attention to racism in the environmental movement. Critiques have focused on themes such as forced removal of Indigenous peoples from ancestral lands, early conservationists support for eugenics, and the chronic lack of diversity in environmental organizations. Today, as people around the world struggle to address complex and interconnected social and environmental crises, our shared future depends on forging an ethic that integrates diverse voices, belief systems, and ways of knowing.

Dr. Curt Meine joins a panel of guests (to be announced soon) to examine the broad arc of Western conservation history, the evolution of a shared land ethic, and the progress and work ahead of us in realizing an ethic of responsibility and reciprocity among people, and between people and land.

Land Ethics, Social Justice, and Aldo Leopold is part of the Building an Ethic of Care speaker series hosted by the Aldo Leopold Foundation in celebration of Leopold Week 2021 (March 5-14). Discover more ways to participate in the celebrations and view the full line up of events in the Building an Ethic of Care speaker series by visiting our website: http://www.aldoleopold.org/leopoldweek

Dr. Curt Meine

Senior Fellow, Aldo Leopold Foundation and Center for Humans and Nature

curtmeine.com/

Curt Meine is a conservation biologist, environmental historian, and writer based in Sauk County, Wisconsin. He serves as Senior Fellow with the Aldo Leopold Foundation and Center for Humans and Nature; as Research Associate with the International Crane Foundation; and as Adjunct Associate Professor at the UW-Madison. Meine has authored and edited several books, and served as on-screen guide in the Emmy Award-winning documentary film Green Fire.

Dr. Eduardo Santana Castelln

Coordinator, Environmental Sciences Museum, University of Guadalajara, Mexico

Presenter information coming soon

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ONLINE: Land Ethics, Social Justice and Aldo Leopold - Isthmus

A 23andMe study from 2015 revealed that close to 4 percent of the companys customers who identified as white Americans had at least 1 percent African ancestry, consistent with an African ancestor within the last 11 generations or so. About 12 percent of whites from Southern states like South Carolina and Louisiana had 1 percent or more of African ancestry.

The Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. has calculated that there are millions of contemporary whites who, according to the old, notorious one- drop rule of the Jim Crow era, would have been considered legally black proof not only of the absurdity of that definition of difference, he writes, but of the power of modern science to blow up false narratives about race and about American history. If modern DNA tests had existed during the heyday of mainstream eugenics in the early 20th century, Dr. Gates and others have suggested, they might have served as direct repudiation of that pseudoscience.

So, what happens when Americans learn about the diversity within themselves? The jury is still out on whether direct-to-consumer genetic testing reinforces our sense of immutable racial categories or breaks them down.

Research by Wendy Roth, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, has found that customers basic knowledge of genetics going into testing may play a role in whether tests accentuate or reduce their racial essentialism. Besides, we are not our ethnicity estimates: For a variety of reasons, including the ways in which were shaped by community, family and personal experience, DNA and identity are not the same.

But whats clear from research and from my conversations with hundreds of consumers is that genetic revelations can inspire journeys of self-discovery, helping people rewrite their understandings not only of their families but of their orientations as Americans.

Some people I spoke with recounted how theyre thinking long and hard, for the first time, about what boxes to check on medical forms asking for race. Some have legally changed their names to reflect their forebears. Others are using research to illuminate the lives of ancestors in Africa before the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

One man I interviewed discovered through DNA and genealogy that his grandfather was Black, and that his mother claimed fictional Sicilian heritage to protect her family from the discrimination shed experienced growing up. He has spent the years since researching the Vermont community where his mom grew up, meeting his Black relatives, and rethinking his place in America. The truth about the past is so important, he told me without it, We cant evolve.

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Opinion | DNA and Race: What Ancestry and 23andMe Reveal - The New York Times