Sterilization of Native American women

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Sterilization of Native American women happened throughout the 1960s and 1970s. (Sterile here means unable to have children; sterilization means making a person unable to have children forever.) During this time, many Native American women were given cutting to make health better or drugs to make it impossible to have children.^[1]

The Indian Health Service (IHS) and the doctors working with them often made women unable to have children forever.

Native American women were told various lies to trick them into being made unable to have children forever. Sometimes they were told that cutting them to make them unable to have children forever could be undone. Sometimes they were not told all the things they needed in order to say "yes" while knowing all they needed to know. Sometimes they were told nothing at all. In other cases, Native American women were told they would lose their healthcare or welfare if they did not get health workers to make them unable to have children forever.^[2]

In some of these cases, girls as young as 11 were made unable to have children forever. Normally and often, doctors told Native American women they should be made unable to have children forever, but did not do the same with wealthier white women.^[3]

1. ↑ Kelly, Mary E. (1979). "Sterilization Abuse: A Proposed Regulatory Scheme". DePaul Law Review. 28 (3): 734. PMID 11661936.
2. ↑ Ralstin-Lewis, D. Marie (2005). "The Continuing Struggle against Genocide: Indigenous Women's Reproductive Rights". Wíčazo Ša Review. 20 (2): 71–95. doi:10.1353/wic.2005.0012. JSTOR 4140251. S2CID 161217003.
3. ↑ Volscho, Thomas (2010). "Sterilization Racism and Pan-Ethnic Disparities of the Past Decade: The Continued Encroachment on Reproductive Rights". Wíčazo Ša Review. 25 (1): 17–31. doi:10.1353/wic.0.0053.