The thing about ‘female exams’ is that we have to make our bodies available to doctors, but we have no idea what they may be doing to our bodies. 

People like to speak about forced sterilization as if it belongs to dusty history books.

As if it ended with eugenics posters.
As if it stopped with court rulings.
As if it vanished when the language became “modern.”

It did not.

Forced sterilization didn’t disappear.

It learned how to blend in.

Today it often wears softer clothing:

“medical necessity”
“best interest”
“liability protection”
“informed consent”
“risk management”
“quality of life”
“cost reduction”

But underneath, the same truth lives:

Some women are still considered too poor to reproduce.
Too disabled to mother.
Too traumatized to decide.
Too incarcerated to resist.
Too young to be believed.
Too marginalized to be protected.

And too disposable to be asked.

Why this matters to parents and caregivers

Because the idea that a woman’s body can be managed for convenience never left.

It simply moved behind desks.

If a system can decide who should not reproduce, it can also decide:

who deserves custody
who is “fit” to parent
whose family is expendable
whose children are “better off elsewhere”
whose voice counts when something goes wrong

This is not abstract.

It shapes real lives.
Real families.
Real futures.

A hard truth

Progress did not erase old thinking.

It rebranded it.

And women still pay the price.

What women deserve

Not persuasion.

Not coercion.

Not “strong recommendations.”

Not decisions made while too young to consent, sedated, afraid, dependent, or cornered.

Women deserve:

• clear information
• true, genuine, and authentic consent
• time to decide
• advocates present
• language they understand
• the right to say no
• protection when they are vulnerable
• bodily autonomy that does not disappear in crisis

Forced sterilization is not over. Forced sterilization lives and breathes today’s air.

It is quieter.

More bureaucratic.

More polite.

But it is still violence.

And naming it is part of stopping it.

Modern Day Eugenics? Billion-Dollar Suit Alleges Virginia Hospital Profited from Mass Forced Sterilizations Of Black Women  The hospital allegedly received roughly $18.5 million in reimbursements from healthcare benefit programs between 2010 and 2019 for surgeries that left dozens of Black women victimized.