Thread by @supramabuhay

The reported mass hysterectomies on migrant women in an ICE detention camp in the U.S. point to a long and dark history of forced sterilizations of the oppressed and marginalized.

Here are some of the other instances white racists in the U.S. drove through genocidal policies via the reproductive organs of people of color:

- From 1930 to 1970, one-third of the women in Puerto Rico were sterilized through the programs designed by the Eugenics Board of the United States, to "catalyze economic growth" and respond to the "depression-era unemployment."

- By 1939, around 30,000 sterilizations were performed in the U.S., over 50% in California, mainly on Latina and Asian women.

- Between 1929 and 1974, North Carolina's eugenics program allegedly forced sterilizations of nearly 7,600 men and women, the majority of them were African-Americans.

- In the 1970s, at least "25% of Native American women of childbearing age" were sterilized.

- Famous civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, underwent a hysterectomy without her consent in 1961 while on a minor surgery to remove a tumor. She spoke about her sterilization to bring consciousness on the subject of forced sterilizations.

- Forced sterilizations have also been particularly prevalent in countries where the U.S. has backed right-wing military regimes like in Latin America, many financed through population control plans by the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala and Peru are some examples where forced sterilizations have taken place, especially on poor and Indigenous populations.