Thread by @_robin_leigh

A brief history of American sterilization:

▪️In 1907, Indiana enacted its first eugenics law, requiring sterilization for any women in state custody who displayed "criminality, mental problems, or pauperism."

Indiana sterilized 2,500 women before the final repeal in 1974.

▪️Virginia passed its eugenics law in 1924, taking it to the Supreme Court, where Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the majority decision.

"It is better for the world," Holmes said, "if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind."

▪️In 1929, North Carolina established a Eugenics Board to sterilize poor, unwed, and/or mentally disabled women, children, and men.

65% of North Carolina's 7,600 victims were black women, even though only 25% of the state’s female population is black.

▪️Between 1937 and 1965, one-third of all Puerto Rican women between 20-49 were sterilized. The U.S. so successfully promoted the idea of sterilization among poor Puerto Rican women, it became known as simply "la operacion."

▪️The Indian Health Service, under the control of the U.S. Public Health Service, began providing "family planning" services to Native American families in 1965.

By the 1970s, 25% of Native women between 15-44 had been sterilized.

▪️A total of 32 states enacted eugenics laws during the 20th century, resulting in the sterilization of 70,000 people.

▪️Between 2006-2010, 150 women in California prisons were sterilized without informed consent.

▪️An unknown number of immigrant women have been forcibly sterilized in a Georgia internment camp.

None of this is new. Fascism, racism, and eugenics are woven into the fabric of our nation.

This is your America. So what are you doing to do about it?