Is This Really Who We Are Now?
Yes, I have seen and read the reports about the unwanted, unwarranted hysterectomies and abuse. In response to the many people who have written asking why I had not yet written about it, the answer is this — I have been reading, researching, studying. In the first 24 hours of the story, much was uncertain, even more was singularly sourced. I wanted more information.
As I sit down to write, I am heartsick at the details, and repulsed by how fast it is disappearing from the headlines, replaced by one outrage after another wrought by this administration.
As Julie Andrews sang, “Let’s start at the very beginning…”
The first thing to know about this story, about these women, is that they were in our custody. ICE detainees whose sins amount to coming here illegally, attempting asylum, or being held on the way out the deportation door.
These women are not murderers, rapists, felons — although murderers, rapists, and felons should never be subject to this treatment either.
They are simply women who needed attention while in custody for various gynecological issues. Like you, like me — heavy bleeding, irregular bleeding, a cyst, etc. These are things that under good, decent care are taken care of with minimal intrusion in the body.
In the case of the women who are detailed in the whistleblower complaint, and now in investigations and discussions with three attorneys involved, at least 17 women received complete hysterectomies, had ovaries removed, fallopian tubes cut.
Not necessary, not consented to. And done by a doctor referred to as “the uterus collector.”
Make no mistake, this is genocide. This echos back to a time period in this world’s history so heinous, so vile, that even cursory readings about what took place in Nazi Germany turns the stomach.
Is this really who we are now?
The United Hates of America, headed up by Donald J Mengele?
We are talking about the ability to conceive here — something I thought conservatives held more precious than gold. The whole Right To Life stance falls flat when you hypocrites have zero feelings about women being stripped of their ability to bear children.
The gynecologist is Mahendra Amin, associated with Coffee Regional Medical Center and Irwin County Hospital in Georgia. The whistleblower who came forward is a nurse, Dawn Wooten, who works at the Irwin County Detention Center. In her allegations, there have been a minimum of 17 / 18 women subjected to unnecessary gynecological procedures — often “with the clear intention of sterilization.”
And no consent.
Let that sink in. Imagine this is you in a foreign country. Held, at the whims of a system you do not understand, over which you have zero control. You seek aid for irregular menstrual bleeding. Suddenly you are at a doctor’s office, expecting a minimal procedure of dilation and curettage (scraping the uterus). You awake to find out that one of your fallopian tubes was removed, insuring you will now have difficulty conceiving in the future.
That was Paula Binam, 30. She has been in this country since she was 2 years old. She has been in custody for two years now, facing deportation because of several charges stemming from shoplifting when she was 17. Not understanding how paying a fine would affect her ability to apply for the DACA program — essentially paying meant pleading guilty — she would go on to have a child here in the states and now have been incarcerated for two years awaiting deportation.
She was part of the complaint filed by Wooten. And even though her deportation appeal is still pending, suddenly, after languishing in that ICE facility for so long, she found herself being spirited away to an airplane to get her out of the country. It was only at the last minute that an attorney had her removed from that plane.
“We were just shocked to find out that — just as we were learning about all these things that were coming out from Nurse Wooten — they wanted to put her on a flight and try to deport her as soon as possible,” her attorney Van Huynh said.
Nothing like getting rid of the evidence, huh?
Another woman’s story is detailed in the complaint- “She was supposed to get her left ovary removed because it had a cyst on the left ovary — he took out the right one,” Wooten said. “She was upset. She had to go back to take out the left and she wound up with a total hysterectomy. She still wanted children — so she has to go back home now and tell her husband that she can’t bear kids … she said she was not all the way out under anesthesia and heard him [doctor] tell the nurse that he took the wrong ovary.”
From reporting — One detained immigrant said she spoke with five women who were at the facility from October to December of last year, all of whom had a hysterectomy done.
That’s insane. That’s deliberate. And that is a human rights violation.
Yet here we are. Children stolen from their parents was not enough. Kids thrown in cages. Report after report of sexual assault on children in detention. Older kids caring for babies and toddlers in detention centers. Filth. Malnutrition. Abuse.
All of that wasn’t enough, I guess. Let’s add some Nazi level experimentation and cruelty to the mix.
The devaluation of the lives of the people we throw into detention for the crime of wanting to come to this country is a stain this land will never remove. The Trump cabal has insured it is tattooed on all of us for eternity. And now, adding forced sterilizations?
We have been here before. And not just as spectators watching it across the ocean.
During what is known as The Progressive Era in this country, eugenics were at the forefront. A program of forced sterilizations under the guise of strengthening the genetics in this land, Indiana was the first to sign a law in 1907 allowing compulsory, forced, involuntary sterilizations carried out on people deemed unfit to reproduce.
31 states quickly followed Indiana’s lead and soon 60,000 people were victims of this arrogant cruelty. It began with permission to target those called “feeble minded” or “mentally defective.” Soon, swaths of women and people of color were lumped in. For example, in California, Mexicans were disproportionately targeted, in North Carolina, Black people were.
Civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer shared her story of forced sterilization for years before her death in 1977. In 1961, she received an unconsented hysterectomy by a white doctor while undergoing surgery to remove a uterine tumor. This practice — done to reduce the Black population by removing the ability to procreate — was so widespread it was referred to as a “Mississippi appendectomy.”
It was, and is, inhumane.
That the eugenics laws existed into the 70’s as most states slowly began to repeal them is unconscionable.
Again, the arrogance is astounding here. And the “feeble minded” descriptor? I see a whole lot of those wearing red caps on their heads these days. I mean, “feeble” is a generous descriptor when referring to thousands of people willing to crowd together, unmasked, during a deadly pandemic. How about we just start rounding up anyone with a low IQ and begin mass hysterectomies and castrations to insure the MAGAt infestation comes to an end?
What’s that? Your body, your choice? FUCK YOU. How about the 60,000 who had no choice in the matter? How about these women we now know about — and God help us, that is only one detention center, one whistleblower — don’t they deserve the same consideration?
No one gives up their rights to dignity, respect, bodily autonomy when ICE scoops them up. And these women did not consent to giving up their ability to procreate. I don’t care what you think about brown people — THEY ARE PEOPLE. And the deep, organic feelings that drive you are the same ones that drive them — love, security, the desire to have children, watch them grow.
We have stolen that from these women. Forever. You do understand that, don’t you? There are no do-overs with a hysterectomy. Reproductive ability — GONE. Forget it — I am preaching to a bunch of men and worse, women, who have zero idea how the female body works to begin with. (The following is real, by the way.)
This country of ours has never been perfect. Has never been equal. Has never once lived up to “liberty and justice for all.” But on this day, when we celebrate 223 years since the signing of our Constitution, to see just how much further from those ideals we have slid, it is heartbreaking. We are on the edge of an abyss.
We have watched as this administration has consistently dehumanized ICE detainees for years. It is not a glitch in their system, it is how they want the system to work. There must be a reckoning. There MUST. The very soul of this nation is at stake. I still believe the good people outnumber the bad people, I do. But all of us, no matter how disgusted we may be, are accomplices if we do not force it.
Is this really who we are now?
