Migrant Women Deserve Reproductive Justice

As our communities move past the jarring confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court and closer to the impending election, we can’t help but think of the reproductive injustice that has and continues to occur in the name politics. This September, we first learned about the horrific events occurring in Georgia’s Irwin County Detention Center, or ICDC. For those of you not in the know, a whistleblower—Dawn Wooten, a licensed practical nurse—has come forward stating that some detained “women may have been required to have a hysterectomy”, and did not fully understand why they were having the procedure. A detainee in the ICDC states she has spoken with five different fellow detainees who had hysterectomies in the latter part of 2019, alone. Just this week it was reported that 57 migrant women were victims of this ICE gynecologist (via The Cut).

We are speaking up and out today, not out of shock, but because we are tired. Tired of the way systems are set up in the United States to not only oppress Black, indigenous, and brown bodies, but also kill us. We have no doubt that these forced hysterectomies are acts of genocide, of eugenics.

Let us not forget our history: that Hitler learned from the United States’ horrific acts, not the other way around. We know that there would be no United States without the coercion, manipulation, maiming, and murder of Black, indigenous, and brown bodies.

We see this in the United States’ history of forced hysterectomies of Black, indigenous, brown, disabled, and mentally ill persons; of the Dalkon Shield; of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Going back further, we see this in the very root of gynecology. J. Marion Sims is hailed as the father of modern gynecology. However, the reason we have the practice of gynecology is because Simms’ experimentation on Black bodies without anesthesia and for the profit of slaveholders. In fact, private corrections companies—such as Lasalle Corrections, owner of the ICDC—are still making money off of incarcerated people's bodies, using them for free, or nearly free, labor. That is really no different than slaveholders making money off experimentation on Black bodies.

Again, we are not shocked by the events at ICDC We’ve known this was coming in a country unashamed to shackle its own incarcerated citizens while giving birth; in a country in which prison guards try to insert them in the process while incarcerated folks are seeking abortions. We have both worked in direct abortion service and seen this happen firsthand. We know about the struggles of immigrants trying to access reproductive care. We know about people who were raped on their journey to the United States and called our phone lines seeking abortion care, and we were there to provide it to them with dignity and compassion.

After all, what is health care without dignity, without compassion, without choice?

We seek a world steeped in, lush with Reproductive Justice. A world in which we all thrive in safe and healthy communities; free to make the choice about whether or not to parent and to parent the children we already have in those safe and healthy communities. At Our Justice, we work to advance our Reproductive Justice values and radically fund abortion care. We hope you will join us in uplifting the voices, rights, and lives of people detained by ICE across the United States by following and supporting the work of the following organizations:

Project South

Government Accountability Project

Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights

South Georgia Immigrant Support Network

Georgia Detention Watch

With love,