Stterilization And Sterilization

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Recommended: An essay on sterilization

Birth control has been in effect for a long time. People think that the pill or condom would hold the top spot for number one, but no. What many people do not know is that sterilization is the number one form of birth control. Today sterilization is a form of contraception for more than 223 million couples (Scott and Glasier, 2003). Even though sterilization is the number one procedure it has not always been executed through the consensus of its partakers.
Sterilization is the medical act of making a person unable to reproduce and is meant to be permanent. Both men and women can be sterilized, the process for men is called a vasectomy and a woman’s procedure is called tubal ligation. .
Beginning History in the U.S.
There is a long history of voluntary and involuntary sterilizations. It may not be known, but the United States is a big offender of forced sterilizations, dating all the way back to the 1900’s. In 1907, the U.S. applied a policy to sterilize “unwilling” and “unwitting” people forcibly (Krase, 1996). In 1924, Virginia adopted a law to reduce the tax burden, because the public facilities for the “insane” and the “feebleminded” had grown (Lombardo). The first person to be picked to be sterilized was a seventeen year old girl named Carrie Buck. Her mother was already being held in an asylum, the Virginia Colony for the Epileptic and the Feebleminded (Lombardo). The people at the Virginia Colony asylum told Carrie that since she shared the same traits as her mother, the feeble-mindedness and sexual promiscuity traits, she would be sterilized so she could not pass on the traits again; at this time Carrie already had one daughter. She was seen as a perfect candidate for Virginia’s new movement. This case went to trial an...

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...the Mississippi appendectomy. Also in the North teaching hospitals would do hysterectomies on poor black women so their medical residents could practice (Roberts, 2000).

Conclusion
It is very sad to see that sterilization went on for so long. Many people, including myself, are in the dark of the horrible things that have gone on in the history of America and the world. I hope that we now have and will not succumb to this kind of thing ever again. The era of forced sterilization is an evil time and should have never started. It seems that we left sterilization in the past, but is it really? There has been talk that California forcibly sterilized their women inmates in their state prison up until 2010; even though it was outlawed in 1979. Let’s hope that America and the world have moved passed that, but there is always a chance that we could revert back to old ways.

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