So, when do the mandatory sterilizations start?

[Girard442]

A government that’s seized the power to force you to give birth can also force you not to. Now that some states have laws on the books that establish the primacy of blastocysts, why not forbid the feeble-minded and other genetic defectives* from producing flawed ones?

*Anachronistic language intentional.

[no_hypocrisy]

1. No shit. Buck v. Bell has NOT been overturned or overruled.

It's still viable law in all 50 states and U.S. territories.

The Court upheld a statute instituting compulsory sterilization of the unfit "for the protection and health of the state."

The ruling was written by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. who argued that the interest of "public welfare" outweighed the interest of individuals in their bodily integrity.

Eugenics on steroids.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bell

[democratisphere]

2. Just heard women's burkas will be this Fall's hottest style.

[zanana1]

7. Maybe that's next. nt

[lark]

8. Nah, the men wouldn't want that so it will never happen.

After all, it's only what the masters want that matters - right?

Edit: Corrected typo

[bobbieinok]

3. Sterilization as condition of immigration eligibility?? Or go the 'Miss. appendectomy' route?

[2naSalit]

4. Been there, done that...nt

[WhiskeyGrinder]

5. Sterilization has always been used as a tool of state oppression in the U.S.

Many women from marginalized communities have been sterilized under dubious consent at best and without consent or knowledge at worst. This isn’t some dystopian dream; it has happened before. Making what sounds like hyperbolic statements to make a point erases the violence done to these women -- there's no "when do they start"; they've been done already.

[Girard442]

11. Good that you pointed that out.

I sort of assumed everybody knew. Maybe not. Good to make it explicit.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

12. Yeah, I just feel like the "Handmaid's Tale" narrative I see in the current discourse -- from memes

to discussion -- centers the middle-class white cis woman experience and actively ignores the fact that women who don't fit that identity have been living this reality for decades. And that can't make it seem like their experience doesn't matter or isn't valid, that these laws are draconian only because they effect people the patriarchal state has treated more leniently (arguably because of that population's complicity with the patriarchy). Reproductive justice means telling the whole story and not assuming people know.

[lunasun]

13. Thank you for your comments . I agree and yes

It has happened here
https://www.thoughtco.com/u-s-governments-role-sterilizing-women-of-color-2834600
By the 1960s, tens of thousands of Americans were sterilized in state run eugenics programs

https://stanford.edu/group/womenscourage/cgi-bin/blogs/familyplanning/2008/10/23/forced-sterilization-in-puerto-rico/

The history of coercive population control policy in Puerto Rico begins with a superintendent of the US Eugenics Record Office named Harry Laughlin. Laughlin used a Model Eugenical Sterilization Law to implement the mandatory sterilization of the “socially inadequate” in 30 US states and Puerto Rico. This overtly eugenic policy deliberately targeted groups of people for sterilization (e.g. the feeble-minded, the insane, orphans, ne’er-do wells) and later inspired Hitler’s forced sterilization program in Europe

[sop]

6. If only certain women were having abortions in America

the so-called Right to Life crowd would be opening up abortion clinics throughout the country.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, white women have the most abortions (49%), black women have fewer abortions (40%), and women classified as "other" (hispanic, asian, etc.) are the least likely to undergo the procedure (just 11%).

Perhaps I've been watching too many nazis and white nationalists marching around on TV, chanting "you will not replace us" and decrying the extinction of the "master race," but if these numbers were reversed, I suspect the folks now opposed to abortion would view it quite differently.

[loyalsister]

14. You nailed it

It's positive eugenics. Increasing population contributions from desireables complements the strategy to reduce that of undesirable genetic influences.

It is laid out in How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics, though not explicitly connected to eugenics. One thing it clarified is the timeline for the hostility towards social programs and how any question of the morality of letting people starve was counterbalanced with a sense of moral superiority in fetus protection.

[rocktivity]

9. Well, "mandatory sterilizations"

DOES begin with the letters M-A-N...


rocktivity

[dlk]

10. These New Abortion Laws Grant Government the Power to Enforce Abortions

Prohibit or enforce abortions—it’s the same authority.