WASHINGTON WATCH: Good On The Sterilized Young Women
These young women aren't going to play along with the Christian Right's forced birth game
Ciara Walter is a 33-year-old woman who recently rushed through her bilateral salpingectomy, a surgical procedure in which the fallopian tubes are removed.
However, Walter doesn't suffer from ovarian cancer or any other disease or disorder affecting her reproductive system.
What she suffers from is a US Supreme Court determined to strip her — and millions of other American women, like her — of their rights and bodily autonomy.
Walter rushed to schedule the sterilization procedure after a draft opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court.
And she's not alone. Obstetricians and gynecologists have seen an uptick across the country — in such states as Arizona, North Carolina, Texas and Florida — where young, healthy women are choosing sterilization in the face of the decision by the high court's right-wing bloc to overturn Roe v Wade and upend nearly a half century of national abortion rights.
“I’ve had more consultations for sterilizations in volume per patient load than I’ve ever had in my career,” Dr Michelle Muldrow, of San Antonio Texas, recently told a reporter. “While she used to see a couple of patients for sterilization every now and then, she now conducts consultations daily.
“Never before have I seen so many women in such a panic or state of anxiety about their bodies and their reproductive rights,” Muldrow said. “They feel like this is their only option.”
It is utterly depressing that the current right-wing effort to drag women backwards has brought women to this point. But, given the current new dystopian outlook their choice is a rational one.
And as perverse as it may sound, I absolutely congratulate these women on this choice. “Good on you!” I say.
The idea that young women — particularly young white women — will be sterile must be sending the Christian Right spastic since the dropping percentage of the white population in the United States is a primary driver of its pro-forced birth agenda.
The anti-abortion movement has been historically tied to the same racist “white replacement theory” which motivated a gunman to open fire in a grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood of Buffalo NY, in May.
“There were concerns that these other groups were demographically outpacing white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant women. And so they thought to limit the bodily autonomy of white women and limit access to contraception in order to force them to have children. That they felt would keep up with the demographic birth rate,” said Alex DiBranco, the co-founder and executive director of the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism.
In 2017, when he was representing Iowa’s 4th Congressional District in the U.S. House, Steve King directly made the connection: “You cannot rebuild your civilization with somebody else’s babies. You’ve got to keep your birth rate up, and that you need to teach your children your values.”
More recently, in May, Matt Schlapp, the head of the Conservative Political Action Coalition, echoed a similar sentiment when he advocated for a ban on abortion. And in June, Illinois Rep. Mary Miller called the end of Roe a “historic victory for white life” at a rally with former president Donald Trump.
So these women seeking sterilization, not only is it a necessary step to stay out of the state's new jurisdiction as a human incubator, but — whether they realize it or not — these women are also striking an important blow against white supremacy.
Editor's Note: Washington Watch is our occasional column on the news and happenings in Washington DC and national politics.
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