User:Carwil/Violence

The mass forced sterilizations of Native American women in the United States have been largely ignored in mainstream historical narratives. Forced sterilization is typically considered a form of violence and the “modern-day” form of genocide occurring across the globe for purposes from pregnancy prevention, to population control, eugenics-motivated practices, and more. This practice is often carried out by those who believe that doing so would be in the victim’s “best interest,” and can take the form of hysterectomies, tubal ligations, and many other ways. These coerced sterilizations have been going on in the United States for decades before, but reached a new peak in the 1970s, as the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act, or often called the Title X Family Planning Program was passed.[1] This act was essentially a federal grant program aiming to provide extensive federal funding for comprehensive family planning and any other related preventative health services for the growing population. Congress, along with President Nixon, both emphasized that one of the main, overarching, goals of the program was to alleviate the financial and health stresses for families of lower socioeconomic status and marginalized groups by increasing access to contraceptive services, resources, medical examinations, and organizations dedicated to family planning services.[2] However, this allowed a number of physicians to handle patients according to personal racist agendas through performing sterilizations when unneeded and without obtaining consent, in addition to having an economic incentive.

In the subsequent years following the enactment of this act, nearly 25-42% of Native American women have been sterilized, ranging in ages from as young as 9 to 44 years old.[3] There are a number of reasons why this exploitation and violation of fundamental human rights of Native American women took place. With the medical field being predominately white and male-dominated at the time, many of these medical health professionals actually believed that they were helping these women with their views that low income and minority families would be more secure financially with less children to raise. They also believed that they were assisting the federal government by limiting births from low-income families by enabling the government to cut down funding for welfare programs such as Medicaid. Women were often uninformed and pressured into undergoing such procedures and in many cases, were told that the surgeries are reversible.[4] Furthermore, the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act of 1970 subsidized hysterectomies and other forms of sterilization for those covered by the Indian Health Service and Medicaid, providing an self-interested economic incentive for doctors to perform these operations and failing to provide women with the information needed to make informed decisions and explore the wider range of options.[5]

The reproductive justice of Native American women has been constrained in a number of other ways as well. Considering that about 40% of the Native population live in rather rural areas and traditional ways of caring for women and mothers-to-be through midwives and tribal healers being outlawed, Native American women face significant difficulties in receiving adequate maternal and prenatal care.[6] Often, the nearest hospitals are hours away, resulting in Indigenous women often receiving a less than optimal number of doctors’ visits during pregnancy and an increasing rate of implications during and after childbirth, which has been shown to directly affect birth outcomes. Reservation hospitals are often consistently underfunded as well. This has drastic consequences for the Native American community, negatively affecting marriages and families, with Native American women suffering from higher rates of psychological problems, including drug abuse, alcoholism, shame, and guilt. Moreover, in 1976, the Hyde Amendment was passed. This passage was essentially an exhaustive cut of Medicaid funding for all abortion-related services, disproportionately affecting women, families of lower socioeconomic status, and women of minority groups.[7] The Hyde Amendment placed Native American women in an even more challenging position, as they then faced the danger of undergoing unsafe and “underground” abortion procedures when and if choosing abortion as the best path for them.

Despite being considered by many as the “modern form” genocide, it has taken decades for this violation of fundamental human rights for Native American women to surface given their greater social invisibility and lower population numbers. This very recent historical event has posed devastating consequences for the Native American community, severely crippling their reproductive rates and can also significantly affect a tribe’s future survival. According to the 1970 census, the average number of children that Native American women had was 3.29 in comparison to the national US average of 2.48. However, after the enactment of the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act and the Hyde Amendment in the 70s, the reported average number of children that each Native American woman had dropped drastically to 1.3 in the 1980 census.[8] Dr. Connie Pinkerton-Uri, a doctor of Cherokee and Choctaw descent, stands as one of the most prominent historical figures on the path of uncovering the reproductive injustices that Native American women have suffered. In an independent study, Dr. Pinkerton-Uri reveals that the Indian Health Services (IHS) system “singled out full-blooded Indian women for sterilization procedures” with an overarching initiative to reduce the birthrates of Native American women.[9] She also notes that “there are about only 100,000 [Native American] women of childbearing age left.”

Additionally, Women of All Red Nations (WARN) is a Native American women’s organization/activist group that has also worked endlessly to change the historical memory and narratives of social injustice accounts impacting Native American women. With their roots in the American Indian Movement, they have publicly stepped out against issues from the contamination of the water systems on Indigenous land from pipeline constructions to advocating on a number of health issues in their communities,[10] to fighting custody battles against the adoption of Native American children into non-Native homes as well. Established in 1974 by Lorelei DeCora Means, Madonna Thunderhawk, Phyllis Young, Janet McCloud, and more, WARN comprises of over 300 women from various tribal sovereigns today.[11] In regard to the forced sterilization of Native American women, WARN has conducted studies, participated in educational events, held conferences, to bring increased awareness to the topic of sterilization abuse.[12] WARN prioritizes the rights of the Native sovereignty, expressing that “Indigenous women face the problems of forced sterilization; our children are being taken from our families and tribes; our culture is being destroyed; our treaties, which are the basis for our very survival, are being declared invalid by the U.S.; our young are being attacked through the racist education system imposed on us; our resources are being ripped off. . . The more we get our message through to the people of the world, the more difficult it will be for the U.S. to ignore its treaty obligations with us.”[13]

It is absolutely critical that the historical memory of the forced sterilizations performed on thousands of Native American women is brought to light. Being relatively ignored and “brushed under the rug” in mainstream historical narratives and federal regulations, these realities have and will continue to negatively impact Indigenous women and the larger Indigenous community, as well as spill over into other branches of society. There remains a lack of coverage in mainstream media and even the modern-day feminist movements of these sterilization abuses against Native American women. Orleck states that “for many white feminists, the battle for reproductive right and reproductive choice was about access to contraception and safe legal abortion. For poor women of color, reproductive rights were about a woman’s freedom to decide when and whether to have children” (97).[14] This further emphasizes the vast disparities that Native American women, along with women of color and of lower socioeconomic statuses face and suffer from in comparison to their white counterparts. Native American women’s maternal and infant health outcomes will continue to be adversely affected if these human rights failures are not addressed and Indigenous women continue to suffer from reproductive injustices. [1] Stith, Butler A, and Clayton E Wright. Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on a Comprehensive Review of the HHS Office of Family Planning Title X Program. Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2009.

[2] Ciardullo, Patsy, and Nevada Wagoner. “The Embryo Project Encyclopedia.” Title X Family Planning Program (1970–1977) | The Embryo Project Encyclopedia, 2016. https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/title-x-family-planning-program-1970-1977.

[3] Adams, Beth. “'Reproduction on the Reservation': The History of Forced Sterilization of Native American Women.” WXXI News, 2019. https://www.wxxinews.org/post/reproduction-reservation-history-forced-sterilization-native-american-women.

[4] Lawrence, Jane. "The Indian Health Service and the Sterilization of Native American Women." American Indian Quarterly 24, no. 3 (2000): 400-19. Accessed November 30, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1185911.

[5] Adams, Beth. “'Reproduction on the Reservation': The History of Forced Sterilization of Native American Women.” WXXI News, 2019. https://www.wxxinews.org/post/reproduction-reservation-history-forced-sterilization-native-american-women.

[6] Kozhimannil, Katy B. “Indigenous Maternal Health-A Crisis Demanding Attention.” JAMA Health Forum. JAMA Network, May 18, 2020. https://jamanetwork.com/channels/health-forum/fullarticle/2766339.

[7] Astor, Maggie. “What Is the Hyde Amendment? A Look at Its Impact as Biden Reverses His Stance.” The New York Times. The New York Times, June 7, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/07/us/politics/what-is-the-hyde-amendment.html.

[8] Sandefur, Gary D., Ronald R. Rindfuss, and Barney Cohen. “7.” Essay. In Changing Numbers, Changing Needs: American Indian Demography and Public Health. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1996.

[9] “Study Finds American Indian Women Forcibly Sterilized - Timeline - Native Voices.” U.S. National Library of Medicine. National Institutes of Health. Accessed November 30, 2020. https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/664.html.

[10] “Home: WARN: Women of All Red Nations.” WARN: Women of All R. Accessed November 30, 2020. https://www.womenofallrednations.org/.

[11] Wishart, David J, ed. “Encyclopedia of the Great Plains.” Encyclopedia of the Great Plains | WOMEN OF ALL RED NATIONS. Accessed November 30, 2020. http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.pd.059.

[12] Warrior Women: #WARNRidesAgain, 2020. https://lakotalaw.org/news/2020-01-24/warn-rides-again.

[13] Fm. "Let This Be a WARNing." Off Our Backs 8, no. 11 (1978): 9. Accessed November 27, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25772918.

[14] Orleck, Annelise. Rethinking American Women's Activism. London: Routledge, 2016.