Showing posts with label — Ryan Dawson (@RyLiberty) April 22. Show all posts
Showing posts with label — Ryan Dawson (@RyLiberty) April 22. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 23, 2025

NARRATOR: It was sterilization as policy. Erasure disguised as compassion.

They couldn't kill the culture with bullets, so they sterilized the women instead.  Erasure doesn't always come through bloodshed.  Sometimes it just stops the next heartbeat.  In the 1970s, Native American women were sent to government hospitals across the United States, many through systems they were told to trust.  Some went in for help.  Some were scared. Some simply needed care.  But when they left, something had been taken from them quietly and permanently.  This wasn't a mistake, it was policy.  It was backed by federal funding and carried out through the Indian Health Service.  It was sterilization disguised as healthcare.  Teenage girls were operated on with out consent.  Mothers were pressured while medicated. Some signed paperwork they couldn't read.  Others were never told anything at all.  It wasn't until years later when they tried to start families that the truth came crashing down.  They hadn't just been patients, they had been targets.  A federal investigation confirmed what had happened.  In just a few years, more than 25% of native American women of childbearing age had been sterilized.  Some clinics had even higher rates. One Federal doctor called it "a solution to the Indian problem."  Another said native women were too poor to raise children.  But to the women who lived through it, there was no justification, only silence shame, and a wound they never asked for.  This wasn't medicine.  It wasn't protection.  It was sterilization as policy. Erasure disguised as compassion.  They didn't march in with rifles; they walked in with clipboards and they ended the next generation before it ever began.