Free Essay Sample: The Sterilization of Women Prisoners

The reproductive justice framework was created by a group of black women who combined social justice and reproductive rights to emphasize the right to reproductive choices for not only women but people of all intersectional backgrounds. While reproductive oppression confines women and exploits their bodies and reproductive systems through hierarchies, the justice framework challenges these structures and looks beyond the most mainstream reproductive issues. The sterilization of prisoner women exemplifies the need for activists to apply the reproductive justice framework and to use an intersectional lens when analyzing a reproductive issue. Various elements of this issue such as the male-dominated staff at women’s prisons, the disproportion between racial groups being victimized versus the number of white jurors selected and white staff performing sterilizations, and the women’s class determining their access to healthcare and medical records all uncover the hierarchies presently contributing to these women’s sterilizations.

Women's sterilizations in prisons are performed and suggested by predominantly male medical staff, exhibiting an imbalance of power that reduces women’s ability to consent or express their discomfort in a safe environment. In the Belly of the Beast documentary, women mentioned visiting the doctor for several symptoms unrelated to reproductive health and still being asked by doctors about when they last received a pap smear. However, one of the doctors claimed he witnessed many of the women enjoying the examination because of their lack of male contact. The opposing arguments between the women prisoners and male doctors require the analysis of gender and how, in this case, it oppresses women, discredits them, and produces inequality. The absence of more female doctors in these prisons also leaves women without anyone to defend them and better understand their health needs. Reproductive health largely differs between men and women, and hiring men to treat women’s needs creates the risk of women not obtaining the proper medical assistance.

The sterilization of women prisoners also holds a racial hierarchy given that Black and Latina women were most often the victims; yet, when lawsuits were filed and juries were present in court, the jury was mostly white. The sterilizations were also performed by a mostly white medical staff. As Loretta Ross stated, “who you are determines what you need from human rights.” Therefore, the lack of more diverse juries and staff limits the ability of these Black and Latina women to have their needs fully met. The racial hierarchy within the court system is visible each time the jury was not representative of the race of the victims and the jury could not fully understand the Black or Latina experience. The absence of diverse juries and staff produces privilege that narrows the women’s possibility to be viewed intersectionally. In Loretta Ross’s interview, she mentions that “privilege invisiblizes itself.” Therefore, for a predominantly white jury to better understand the prisoner’s experience, they’d first have to acknowledge their “invisible” privilege to recognize the women’s marginalization and lack of choice in their reproductive health. Without understanding this racial aspect of their medical experiences in prison, they’re unable to make a fully informed judgment and cannot understand their human rights needs and struggles.

The women’s lack of access to safe and healthy medical facilities puts the power in the hands of their limited options of doctors and healthcare services, producing a hierarchy of class. In the documentary, one of the women seeking legal assistance is interviewed and asked questions that intend to discredit or invalidate her sterilization experience by reminding her of her past crime and reminding her that she’s a prisoner. Because prisoners are deemed lower class and viewed as uncredible or less worthy of proper medical care, the prison staff is valued more than the prisoner and can, therefore, get away with harming the women and withholding medical records. The women and their lawyers also brought up how unsafe the conditions were inside of their medical facilities, mentioning an assembly line of women receiving pap smears, leaks from ceilings, and women waiting in puddles of water. 

Reproductive justice must be intersectional to fully understand the scope of reproductive issues. Without the intersectional lens on the sterilization of women prisoners, it’d be near impossible to recognize the gender, race, and class hierarchies involved in this issue. As Luna and Luker wrote regarding past movements, “[I]f reproductive rights are to be meaningful and approach justice, a diversity of women’s reproductive experiences must be central to the movement efforts” (334). Utilizing the intersectional lens provides more context for how women are being oppressed as prison institutions control women’s bodies, court juries are unrepresentative of the plaintiff’s race, prison staffs are unrepresentative of the prisoners’ race and gender, and women’s prison systems limit women’s body autonomy.