Stratified Reproduction

Sterilization

Sterilization is a surgical procedure that alters some portion of the reproductive system to prevent conception. As with many forms of birth control, sterilization typically allows individuals to choose when and under what conditions to conceive and, as such, provides a significant level of personal choice and autonomy. However, for many of its advocates, sterilization is viewed as a viable population control method and solution to social problems.

Early advocates of sterilization framed their discussions of sterilization with explicit reference to a (constructed) genetic hierarchy. Within this hierarchy, wealthy whites, assuming themselves to be the most intelligent and possessing the best social character, reigned supreme. During the 1960s and 1970s, the social hierarchy was built on a slightly different premise: cultural inheritance of socially (un)desirable traits. In this construction of social desirability, wealthy whites were still at the apex. Blacks, American Indians, the poor, single mothers (particularly those receiving government assistance), criminals, the chemically addicted, and the mentally ill were marked as the socially unfit. Most forced sterilization during the 1960s and 1970s occurred in the southern states and among poor women of color.

Questionable sterilization practices persist today. For example, the use of public money to fund abortions is banned (see later), but public money can and does fund sterilization among the welfare population. Another example of this is the California-based nonprofit Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity (CRACK), which posts large billboards in poor black and Latino communities offering $200 to people with substance abuse problems who can document that they have been sterilized or are using long-term birth control. Since CRACK's founding in 1997, the organization has serviced thousands of clients.

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