Friday, July 18, 2008
Sterilization
The article which discussed sterilization this week was one more thing you could add to the list of stuff that completely shocked me this semester. The tactics that doctors went through to get people to do sterilization was alarming, but that wasn't even the worst part. It's amazing how something so prevalent in Indian communities across the country occurred in recent times. I would understand more if this occurred in middle of the 19th century, but for it to occurr in the middle of the 20th century after our country witnessed the devastation that occurred to Jews in Europe during WWII shows that the leaders of our country are slow learners. I've always viewed our nation in a positive light and believed that we have progressed throughout the last several hundred years in how we treat people of all races, but for something as widespread and devastating to occur in just the last 50 years is pitiful. Considering only 100,000 Indian woman remained who could give child birth, it seems as though many people should have been put in jail for doing such a bad thing. Despite the fact that this occurred during a time where our country was mistreating black as well, I still believe that the practice of sterilization on woman throughout our country was much worse. Obviously both were wrong to do, but it seems that you would learn about the sterilization crisis alongside with Civil Rights Movement in history classes.
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6 comments:
This article was so upsetting. I had no idea that things like this were going on but I guess its just another shocking set of actions taken in order for a selfish government to maintain dominance.
Things like this make me lose faith in our government, not that I already haven't. Doing something like this to anyone is just pitiful.
I also agree that it was quite upsetting. What is even more upsetting is that this was the first time I had ever heard of anything of this sort. I suspect there was a great deal of care taken to sweep forced sterilization "under the rug" so to speak.
Hard to believe that this ever happened in my opinion. It makes it harder to sleep at night knowing that are government tried to erase a group of people.
Just another black stain conveniently glossed over in accounts of our history...did you expect anything less?
Not only have most of us not heard about this, but it looks like even people from that generation did not know what was going on. I was with my family this weekend, most of whom are well educated, and none of them had heard about this either. They were also very disturbed to hear about sterilization.
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