2020/11/06 by Jennifer Nelson · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes #Medical History and Research #Historical Gender and Feminism Studies
paper · doi:10.1002/9781119522690.ch18
openalex publication_date 2020/11/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
In an effort to better understand the history of reproductive coercion, historians have written of twentieth-century eugenics and its ties to compulsory sterilization. In Johanna Schoen's history of sterilization, she shows how medical researchers, public health practitioners, and sometimes family members charged that women's “sexual delinquency” demonstrated their “feeblemindedness” and justified compulsory sterilization. Women were most often sterilized when they interacted with medical personnel in settings in which they sought healthcare, including nonpermanent forms of birth control. White women's demands for voluntary sterilization accompanied calls for access to other forms of reliable and safe contraception and legal abortion. The term “reproductive justice” implicitly critiqued calls for “reproductive choice,” voiced by mostly white feminists. Some of the most groundbreaking histories of reproductive politics written since 2002 have examined the pro-life movement, cultural changes to popular understanding about and representations of the fetus, and debates about when life begins.