Beyond the question of abortion, there’s the sad and difficult history of sterilization in the United States. Usually, the victims have been poor, and often they’ve been women of color. Katilin Prest, from the AudioSmut podcast, brings us one woman’s story and a some background on the modern face of the eugenics movement.
For more reading, check out this CIR report on sterilized inmates in California and see the book by Dorothy Roberts, Killing the Black Body.
Kaitlin Prest is a radio producer and audio documentary artist interested in sound and intimacy. She is the co-creative director of the Audio Smut podcast, producer and sound designer at the Life of the Law podcast, and co-creative director of New York’s Radio Cabaret.
Not a comment, but a question: it used to be very easy to download the podcast to put on my phone…where can LatinoUSA be downloaded now?
Hello: your show today obout women and the way doctors treat them caught my attention enough that i have gotten out of bed to write this (listen in the middle of the night at kqed radio). I gave permission for an ovarion fibroid cyst to be removed and i woke up to a total hysterectomy. in addition the 3 residents who did it came to tell me the next day that they had not done it right and i would need surgery in the next 20-30 years because they had not know where some parts went in closing me up and my colon would be-would be and is- affected. why did they do it i asked their supervisor-they needed the practice said he. i was a medi-cal/medicade patiet at the time and i had no means to do anything about it. i was 35 and had already gone through menopause. i never knew before tonight that that kind of “training” happened to aanyone else. thank you.