Indigenous Women's Reproductive Rights Summary

After World War II, eugenics theories which favoured the purity of the race and heterosexuality, were still in people’s mind and common in many societies. Many traditional norms were still spreading and part of societies. The article The Continuing Struggle against Genocide: Indigenous Women’s Reproductive Rights by D. Marie Ralstin- Lewis, written in 2005, analyzes how the weight of women’s choices over their bodies were limited in the science domain which was influenced by politics and the eugenic movement between the 1960s and the 1980s. Another article called Critically Queer written by Judith Butler in 1993 evokes gender performativity. The author focuses on how gender’s role, nowadays, are the consequence of societal norms that have been …show more content…
People trust scientifics and doctors knowledge, because they have a prestigious role in our society. They are the ones that save people’s lives, and the ones who are supposed to know the best procedures when they’re facing issues. In the second part of the 20th century, the eugenic movement, which was popular at this period, has shaped politics. Moreover, politicians have a big impact on science. It’s important to take in consideration that on the advisory boards of the Population Council, ruled by ten white men, the majority was eugenic supporters. Those men supported the concept of the purity of the race, considering that the “biologically inferior” ones needed to stop procreated. Additionally, they were part of the policies making and consequently they were targeting fertility control in their decisions process. Thus, the eugenic movement impacted the science domain which started to develop a racist and sexist environment. Although the fact that science started to develop eugenic theories is an important point, but the most crucial point was the behavior of the doctors over their patient treatments but especially patients considered as inferior such as the non-white woman. Between the 1960s and 1980s, science has threaten human rights but more particularly women’s rights by manipulating them. In fact, during this period, a large amount of IHS sterilizations has been used over patients. What is …show more content…
In their opinion, non-white women were spoiling the human race. Moreover, they also provided theories stating that the only legal relationship is the one between a man and a woman; and that all other types of relationship weren’t natural, and couldn’t be legal within