A Geek History of Time - Episode 324 - Interview with Historian and Author Dr. Rebecca Kluchin about Forced Sterilization

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

Okay, so there's there there are two possibilities going on here. One you're bringing up a term that I have never heard before. The other possibility is that this is a term I've heard before but it involves a language that uses pronunciation That's different from Latin it and so you have no idea how to say it properly an intensely 80s post-apocalyptic Schlock film and schlong film, you know, it's been over 20 years, but spoilers Okay, so so the Resident Catholic thinking about that. We're going for low Earth orbit. There is no rational. Blame it on me after.

And you know I will. They mean it is two o'clock in the fucking morning. Where I am. I don't think you can get very much more homosexual panic than that. No. Which I don't know if that's better. I mean, you guys are Catholics. You tell me. I'm just kind of excited that like you and producer George will have something to talk about

That basically just means that I can show up and get fed This meeting is being recorded. This is a Geek History of Time. Where we connect nerdery to the real world. My name is Ed Blaylock. I'm a world history teacher at the middle school level here in Northern California. And just this week in my class, I actually wound up having a student try to turn in an assignment. One of the questions I had in my assignment was I wanted them to describe the geographical region in which a particular Native American group lived and the climate that that geographic region has and The answer I got from this student was a Probably bachelor's degree level definition of cultural geography

and then the kid tried to argue that they had not gotten it from chat GPT and So yeah, that's that's why That's the brave new world that I'm working in right now, so How about you? Well, I'm Damien Harmony I am a US history teacher at the high school level up here in Northern, California And for I'm not gonna pile on to that though. These stories I have are many Instead I'm gonna share the little bit of mischievous joy that I found this week. I bought a box of 60 little gnomes

and 60 little gnomes. And I hid them in my kids rooms and in their bathroom, and the next house I go to I'm going to take a pocketful, and I'm just going to keep doing this. Now if people have animals, I will hide them high up so that the animals won't just gobble them up and you are wondering why your dog is shitting gnomes, but I am absolutely going to be hiding gnomes for the next several months. So you're welcome world. Okay. Yeah.

And you've been to my house. So, you know why I'm not afraid of that. My house is already a gnome sanctuary. Thanks to thanks to my wife. So this is true. I'll just join the party. Right? No, they'll be eating together.

It'll be like gnome chomsky. There you go. There you go. There you go. And with that, I'd like to point out that we have a victim guest in the chat with us tonight. Actually, I have been chomping at the bit to get this guest on for quite some time. This is a old friend of mine, actually, and an old mentor of mine, Dr. Rebecca Kluchen, who teaches at California State University Sacramento and has written a book called Fit to be Tied and my screen just went blank on the entire rest of the subtitle, but it is long and it is mighty. I'm just going to pull that up here because I'm a professional. Sterilization and reproductive rights in America

1950 to 1980. So that is a heck of a title. Dr. Kluchen, thank you for joining us. So I guess my first question is, how long have you hated America? No. No. No, so funny thing, I'm covering the eugenics movement

right now in my classes. So I'm dating this a little bit, although not much because most people would expect that would have been a lot further along by this time of the year. But we've just gotten to the eugenics movement and we also had a spirit day where it was white lie day. So you wear a white t shirt and you you wrote a white lie on it. Like, you know, I don't sleep in class or things like that. And I was about

a hair's breadth away from just writing great replacement theory. Because that is a white lie. That is. Yeah. Well, white is not slimming on me. And I didn't want to do that. So so Because that is a white lie White is not slimming on me and I didn't want to do that so So so tell me you have tenure without telling me you have tenure, right? Well, the gnomes will tell so yeah, it's true. Anyway So dr. Klutschen welcome. Thank you for joining us tonight I'm very happy to be here. Yay.

What got you going toward this topic, first of all? I've got plenty of questions about the book itself and the content, but this is not a happy topic. And you are, by all accounts, as long as I've known you, a fairly happy person. So what happened? Well, in graduate school, I was studying issues related to abortion and abortion policy and Kind of casting around for a dissertation topic and I I

Started to understand the concept of reproductive justice as support as opposed to reproductive rights Reproductive rights is often narrowly defined as abortion. Reproductive justice tends to be far broader than that. It's about the ability to determine when and under what conditions to become pregnant, to choose to bear a child, to not. But also, if you're going to have a child to be able to raise it with access to good schools, food, all basic resources. Reproductive justice now is deeply related to queer and trans rights and it has alliances with Black Lives Matter, the ability to have a child and raise him or her to adulthood. So as I was looking at issues related to reproductive justice, I kept kind of circling back to issues of sterilization

and The more I looked at forced sterilization. There were a few instances of really some egregious cases In the 1960s and 70s and I was very much a post-world war two scholar And as I started to look at these issues of forced sterilization. I mean, I was horrified by them, but I was also trying to understand them. What are the patterns? How is this happening? Is this eugenics? Is this not eugenics? What is going on? And I realized that it was not just about what eugenicists would have called it negative eugenics. This concept of preventing individuals who are seen as unfit from having children, but they also had something called

positive eugenics, which was about encouraging those who are fit to have children. And I realized that at the same time that a lot of these forced sterilizations were happening, sterilization becomes a legit form of contraception. So it becomes about opposing trans, and it's in fact the legitimization of sterilization as a contraceptive method that's legit, it's not something that happens to people in institutions. It's not eugenic, right? It's seen as something that the average American would want. And they're thinking about it around the pill and the birth control and the pill and the IUD, that the fact that those

sterilization rates are going up was what was covering all the forced sterilizations because it looks like there's no such thing as informed consent and it looks like they're all just going up, but some have consent, some don't. So I became very interested in the interplay between those two forces. Realizing that it's not just. How to separate them out. Yeah, you almost can't separate them out, right? Because they follow along the same negative and positive eugenics. And I call it neo eugenics.

So, I mean, essentially I was kind of looking at issues of abortion and then realizing that reproductive justice and reproductive rights should be far broader than just that issue. And that allowed me to really look at some conflicts between women. It's very easy to say that all women believe this or women who are pro-life believe this, women who are pro-choice believe this, but it's far more complicated. And for somebody who's been sterilized, she doesn't care if she has the right to abortion necessarily. That's not her primary concern. She can't get pregnant. So, I mean, that was kind of a long way of getting at it, but I had written

about underground abortion. I had written about the abortion pill. It was then called RU-46. So I was looking at those issues and really realizing that issues of reproduction were beyond kind of that trigger issue issue of abortion and from there it just Took off and I can't seem to leave sterilization. I'm already on to a new book and I have multiple articles coming out about sterilization Again, I can't seem to leave it Do you think your inability to leave it is due to new stuff coming up as as we have more people? gaining a voice and being able to be a part of the story or because we keep finding instances of it continuing to happen?

I think it's certainly a continuity issue. In California in the early 2000s, forced sterilization was happening in prisons. I believe it was September of 2020, there is a whistleblower at ICE who's saying that it's happening in detention facilities. So yeah, I don't think it goes away. For me recently, it's been related to Dobs because when Dobs is handed down and Roe v. Wade falls. More and more people are concerned about the ability to control their reproduction. And with abortion being criminalized in many states, folks are turning to sterilization as a form of permanent contraception. And that's really where it's come up in many ways.

Yeah. And just to reset for folks who might not know things by the name, in 2022, if I recall correctly, the Dobbs decision came down and it was, I forget who the other side was, so it's good that I'm resetting this. The Dobbs decision is, could you rename it for us again? The Dobbs decision essentially knocks Roe v. Wade down. And it says that abortion is not guaranteed at the federal level, but is a state issue. And consequently, the last time I looked, the statistics could have changed, but 22 states had either significantly restricted or ended the right to abortion in those states. So when you have nearly half the states that have significant restrictions on abortion,

there are many folks who are concerned that if I get pregnant and I don't want to be pregnant, what are my options? And so many people are, they may not have been ready to go towards permanent contraception, but given the changing political landscape are saying this is not a risk that I would like to take at the moment. And so they're turning to permanent contraception, which is sterilization. Right. And I would, you know, states' rights is always the bastion of the person who wants to have a feudal system in some way because in many of those states,

the gerrymandering is such that people are squeezed out of, so you can't just say, oh, well, if you don't like your elected representatives and choose other ones, or if you don't like your judges, you can vote them out. It's like, well, it doesn't work that way. And you know that, you did it on purpose that way. Stop it.

And that's why we needed a federal protection, just like we did for education equity, just like, you know, speaking of things that are going strangely awry. But so them kicking it to the states was really kind of a, how do I say, like a fire sale on who can rush to get the most restrictive laws passed as quickly. A lot of them had it ready to go. They just had to change the date on it.

There were trigger laws in effect. Yeah. So as soon as Roe falls, those laws that criminalize abortion are there. And it's led to a series of issues about, can you cross state lines? What about issues of abortion pills? Can we use medical abortions? Can they be prescribed in one state and mailed to another? That's a little Comstock for us. And now all that's in the Comstock Act is in play. And that was, for folks who don't know, that was a law in 1873. There was an Antibesinity Act that said you could not mail, among other things References to and these would have been advertisements because there was mail order contraception and abortion pills at the time

And that's what essentially leads to the criminalization of abortion in the United States and now and it was never overturned And now the act is back. I Mean it's back in discussion My students were learning it just this last week and I was explaining to them, I'm like, look, the Comstock Act, it's a federal law. So you're going to federal prison for this. There's the doctor in Kansas, you know, and there was, you know, and on top of that, he gets to ride the train for free, censoring and going through people's mail, which is a federal crime. But, you know, and just like kind of going into like, here they're using the federal

government to attack different states, ability to determine for themselves. And and again, it gets it gets back to that the privacy issues that this is a press issue. I think there's a tariff act in 1930 that was then in 36 knocked down. I might be off by my year by Japanese? Pessaris, US versus one path. The Japanese Pessaris, yes. Yes. 37, maybe.

Because there's also Young's Rubber Company, but that was like a copyright case. But the Japanese Pessaris said, or Pessaris, pardon me, said, the Latin teacher in me. But the Pessessaries said, or pessaries, pardon me, said, the Latin teacher in me, ugh. But the pessaries case said that anybody can, any doctor can prescribe through the mail. It's not obscene if it's going from a doctor to the patient. Yes. And the other part with that one was also doctors can receive pessaries in the mail that they could then prescribe in person to a patient too.

And it's one case of Japanese pessaries and it was, they were coming from abroad. And so Margaret Sanger is behind that, the birth control crusader, sets this up trying to get caught. And essentially that allows folks to prescribe pessaries off label because there had been

other laws like in New York that said doctors could prescribe contraception to prevent the spread of venereal disease, but not to prevent pregnancy. And Margaret Sanger was just, it's really bothered her. And so she was like, I don't understand. And she kind of set this up. This was a few years later, but yeah, that was part of it, is that what do you mean you can prescribe contraception to? And essentially it was prescribing condoms to men.

So they would not get BD. But women who could become pregnant couldn't get access because of the Comfrag Act. Right. Yeah. And Mary Ware Dennett also was trying to attack it from a different end, because she's like, no, this is straight up about people's rights to privacy

and the right to, she was saying it was a first amendment issue, because not only is it a freedom of press, because you're sending things through the mail that are printed, like instructions, but also denying a person the right to their own contraception or toward knowledge about their own bodies was denying them the freedom to speech on some levels.

And as we said, Comstock Act is still on the books, so neither woman was successful in getting it struck down in any way, but there were end-arounds that were developed. Well, and every state by 1900 had passed its own mini Comstock Act. So you have one at the federal level and then you have the state level Yeah, you know folks are outgunned Yeah, well, this is only gonna get bleaker because now I'm gonna ask you questions about about the book. So Shit what? Yeah, I need to go get another beer. Yeah, you do. Yeah, actually Ed fun

Fun thing Margaret Sanger her was it her son-in-law a couple years later developed Wonder Woman The comic that was her son-in-law one day and he based a lot of Wonder Woman on Margaret Sanger and Then gave her powers based on his interest in BDS and M and polygraph tests Very odd. So, yeah. Well, he was an odd duck. Yeah. So, yeah.

You know, you don't see that over at Timely Comics. It's only at DC. It's only at DC. So, okay. So, by the way, we talk about the Eugenics movement on this podcast, actually. Back, way back way in episode 232 and 233 and 234 and 235 because I can never do anything halfway and it was the idiocracy and why you should feel bad for laughing at that movie Because the home have you ever seen idiocracy dr. Clujan

You have to call me Becky though. Okay, I'm sorry Okay, okay I was waiting for permission. But what have you ever asked for permission? forgiveness, I guess. But, but Idiocracy was this movie that came out in 2004. I want to say it's Mike Judge. And it's a basically an average person falls asleep and gets rip van winkled for 500 years. And when he wakes up, the whole world has gotten dumber.

And people are wearing crocs everywhere. There's the most popular TV show on TV is called Ouch My Balls. Starbucks has become a bordello. Costco is where you can get your law degree, the president is a professional wrestler. So everybody in 2016 was like, it wasn't supposed to be a documentary. And I was like, it didn't feel right that people were saying that because there were some racial aspects to the movie as well.

The president was a black man whose last name was Hispanic. They talked about how big someone's head was. I mean, there was just all kinds of stuff going on and the very first three minutes of it is eugenics 101. Like, here's two people, they're white, they're wealthy, and they're waiting to have children and here's a guy who has His girlfriend is carrying one of their children and she's swearing that she's pregnant again and it lists their IQs and So it goes back and forth and cleavon is actually not only gotten her pregnant but also gotten their neighbor pregnant and then Five years later and they're very very poor and and and these people are still waiting

and Now they're fighting with each other over who's to blame for the fact that you know They can't get pregnant and you know and can't do it in this market anyway meanwhile Cleavon has had like eight more kids with three other women and Then you go ten years later and Cleavon's son is like after the big homecoming game He's got three gals. None of whom are white under his arm. He's like I'm gonna fuck every one of you and

then it and it shows like the What he called the family tree and it just just boop boop boop boop boop boop boop boop boop boop and and if you zoom In you look at the names They are Multi-ethnic names multi-ethnic faces and all this kind of stuff meanwhile this this couple over here 15 years down the road he died yeah and they never had children and she's frozen some eggs so here's hoping and the whole point is like smart people have not been breeding enough dumb people and people. And so 500 years later, the most average man

now is now a genius. Is a super genius. Yeah. So and all the doctors are people who are people of color and all this. And it's again, it's very, very broad brushed, very, very, I would say low effort satire, so it's very accessible and it is very slapsticky and stuff like that and it is funny but at the same time it's like hey here's here's some serious eugenics stuff going on here. Can we look at the not quite subtext here? Yeah. Like it is subtext but nearly like can we so I recommend it But not for the quality But yeah, but anyway, that's episodes 232 through 235 Because I bring in a bunch of eugenics stuff. So to your book though at what point did

eugenics filter down to middle-class white people being the goal? Like, in terms of, because it seemed to me through reading and through research and reading that it stopped being about, let me explain to you how awesome my family is, I'm looking at you Dalton, and let me explain to you how awesome upper class white people are. And then it just became like the norm was middle class white people. It seemed more accessible at some point. Like that was the goal. Well, there weren't that many upper class white people. I mean, you're talking about a you know, 1%, right? Right. But you have a rise of the middle class. And it's really, I mean, I think it's important to see positive and negative eugenics together and think about why eugenics

emerges as this science. And I say that in giant air quotes, but it was literally a legitimate science for decades. It emerges at the turn of the 20th century and it really is a response to a lot of social anxieties. We've had mass immigration, urbanization, industrialization. If you grew up in 1870, the year 1900, the world would have looked totally different. Take another 10 or 20 years, now you've got cars, now you've got street cars. The world just radically changed for many people. It really transforms and a lot of, you have the emergence of the middle class, especially the white middle class, the managerial class in all of these factories.

You have women challenging a lot of things. You've got the suffrage movement, the contraceptive movement, the birth control movement. You've got as part of the progressive era, you have the rise of social work. You have all of the settlement houses. You have women in education. And ideas that there is a natural order of things and that white folks are naturally on top and certain white folks, because you're in a period of mass immigration, you know, millions of people come between 1870 and 1921 or 24 when we have these very clear

immigration restrictions. The vast majority of them are from Eastern and Southern Europe. Right. And within a generation, they can blend and pass as white. And so eugenics essentially says they're not real, they're not the top white people, they're not white people who are either native born to the United States or were from France or Germany or England. And so there was this real fear that they were going to,

that they could pass. Folks of color, folks of Asian descent oftentimes they were going to, that they could pass. Folks of color, folks of Asian descent oftentimes had ethnic markers that made it so within a couple of generations, they still didn't look white. You couldn't always pass as white. So it was for those folks who were concerned about their social status and their place in society, right? The sense that I have these privileges that hold me here.

Those Eastern and Southern European white folks were really concerning. And what eugenics does is say these are not real white folks. They're lesser white folks. And those are, you know, what an IQ test, when the IQ test comes in, it supposedly standardizes, you know, these definitions of what is, really it's, that's what is normal. And then it says everything below that is not okay. And so you get this, you know, these definitions of what is really it's that's what is normal. And then it says everything below that is not OK. And so you get this, you know, imbecile moron, idiot, literally definitions. Yeah. And it's very convenient to place those who are very poor,

those who are working class, those who are folks of color in those standards. Right. Yeah. And then to really take, and there's a historian, Natalie Lira, who has this wonderful book called Laboratories of Deficiency, where she looks at Mexican and Mexican-Americans in a specific institution in California. And she is able to very astutely connect ideas

of the lack of reproductive fitness are also connected to ideas of disability. You're seen as less intelligent. And Mexican Americans always rank, or almost always rank, as less intelligent according to these IQ tests. They score. They don't rank, they score. And so therefore race, ethnicity become tied to these standards of intelligence or lack thereof, which then we start to see labels of ability disability tied in right so it's not just race and ethnicity you Have ideas about disability because who else are eugenics eugenicists going after individuals with disabilities They start sterilizing they start segregating sure they do not like you know folks with

They really don't like epileptics. They don't like alcoholics. That was a huge um, they really don't like epileptics. They don't like alcoholics. That was a huge category for them. Women who wear children out of wedlock. Right. Um, but then individuals with, um, cognitive or physical disabilities were also, um, believed to be passing on negative traits. And I think the thing that's so nefarious about eugenics and is that it's framed as a public health issue. This emerges alongside the rise of public health. And so there's a case in 1927 called Buck v. Bell, which legitimizes eugenics sterilization laws.

So states can sterilize individuals if they're deemed unfit and they're done, do so by the public good. And in fact, in that case, they reference a vaccine, just like we can a vaccine, a previous case about vaccine, that it says essentially just because just like we can mandate people have vaccines to keep people healthy. So too is the eugenics sterilization of certain individuals keeping our society healthy. Right. So I think that becomes this question where we see issues of reproductive choices private. This was seen as public. And then it becomes an issue of public health.

And public cost. And yes. And that's one of the big issues is that public health is related to the checkbook, right? So to kind of go back to your original question, it really is, I think it emerges at this moment of mass anxiety and real upheaval. And what eugenics offers is it says science says this is right, medicine says this is right, and it essentially says traits are fixed and they can't change. So, in the 1880s, you could have a woman

who bore a child out of wedlock and she might go to an unwed mother's home that is run by a Christian charity. And they would not only help her have her baby, but they would teach her a skill like sewing or something that would allow her to raise her child independently. Not be on the public dole, but to also stay with her child. It was essentially, you can reform.

What Eugenics says is traits are fixed. So if I bear a child out of wedlock, my daughter is destined to bear a child out of wedlock and her daughter will do the same. So it doesn't matter how people act. There's no nurture. It's only nature. Things are immutable. And then it reinforces ideas of white supremacy. It reinforces ideas of patriarchy. I mean, it really gets an ability over disability. It can be quite dangerous in that way, but it says that these are fixed.

And because it has science behind it and science science says and how do you argue with science? Right? Well, and as I'm fond of pointing out they hadn't discovered that air wasn't a substance until 1927 So they didn't know what they didn't know You know and it took a while for germ theory to you know to take on Understand that things you can't see could make you sick They understood my asthma like something in the air something in the environment Like the idea that you can put under a microscope and identify it Yeah, and like real doctors didn't believe I mean they took like doctors a couple decades to get on board with your theory

So killed killed Garfield In so doing, you know. Yeah. You know, it's it's interesting because you you you point out that they they're saying that, you know, science says it's it's there's almost a moral offloading to do a thing that you it's it's there's an appeal to intuition that's going on there, you know, cuz well just look at them You know, it's like that that's easy to do And then there's a moral offloading because it's not me saying it

It's science and we just can't afford that because we're so crowded now Because you know all these things, you know, that's that's their argument and it reads like they're just kind of looking for a way to yank back the clock to a mythologized time of when This is the snapshot of when America was great And so we're just going to make it that way again What what jumps out at me as as this exchange is going on is right now? I'm teaching Rome to my the Roman Republic to my sixth graders

Mm-hmm, and we're talking about Roman law and under Roman law There was a requirement that if a child was born deformed you had to put it to death, right? You know and it was a it was a more it was a it was an imperative. There was nothing else to do for it, you know and It was an imperative there was nothing else to do for it, you know and There there has always been this well, you know, I mean the gods are gonna get angry if we don't turns into Well, you know, it's science. You can't argue with that

You know, there's there's the goal pole shifts so that you can keep killing people. Yeah that you deem unfit Well, I mean that's where you look at eugenics You've got now have like five different ways to go into this conversation But I think if you look at you know this continuum of eugenics You can look at sterilization all the way to genocide, right? I mean those are on it's a continuum Yes, how far are you gonna go? But I think they're you know, it is on the same plane I think the thing that's different in the US context is that individuals who had cognitive or physical disabilities for a very long time through the colonial period,

early republic, through much of the 19th century really didn't live at home. And folks with physical disabilities were considered healthy. So long as they were productive, so long as they could support a family, maybe you lost an arm in the Revolutionary War. No one saw you as any different, right? But we have the emergence of institutions, and then it becomes certain individuals should not be in society, as opposed to certain individuals are part of our community. No, certainly the wealthy would send away individuals that they deemed mentally ill. And a lot of times it was wealthy women who would be put in institutions in the 19th century. But there is a real push to segregate individuals with disabilities.

And in fact, I was just teaching this in one of my medicine classes, my history of medicine class is that individuals in the mid 20th century in the United States, if a white family, especially a white middle-class family had a child with a disability, say someone with downs, they would be told this birth is a tragedy, this child is a tragedy, and they would be told you should institutionalize this child. And sometimes doctors at birth would say, tell your other children this baby died. Or they would say, you're just not prepared. And so there is this period in American history where especially folks with cognitive disabilities, but also folks with physical disabilities at birth were sent away. And in fact, the earliest,

some of the earliest advocates of the disability rights movement were mothers. Have you ever read The Good Earth with Pearl Asbach? Yeah. Yeah. She was one of the first people who kept a child. She had a child, I want to say with cognitive disability, I can't remember entirely at the moment. And she refused to institutionalize the child and actually spoke a lot about this is my

child and other celebrities did the same thing And there's kind of a movement among upper and middle class white families to say I'm gonna raise a child you know raise my child in our family and then what ends up happening is they try to put their children in school and Schools are public schools are like we can't take care of your children We are not equipped your children can't go to school here, right? And mothers are like, yeah, that's not acceptable. And we don't have an Americans with Disability Act at that point. Right. But mothers who are saying, yes, my child is in a wheelchair, but you have to find a way to accommodate my child, were some of the earliest folks

who are active in that movement. But it does, I think Ed, you're getting to this issue of long-term, real shunning of individuals with disabilities. And if you can say with eugenics, these folks are not fit and once more, they're dangerous, right? Because they could pass on these disabilities, because eugenics, eugenicists thought traits that we would assume are not transmittable genetically were transmittable. So if, and they really liked, well, they really disliked women who bore children out of Weibach. And they believed that that was a trait that was genetically passed down. And that was specific to women. For men, it was about criminality. So if you're a criminal, if you're, you know,

I'm a poke at Damien, Damien's a criminal, his son's gonna be a criminal, his son's son is gonna be a criminal. Much of the way that we would say, you know, I have brown eyes, my son has brown eyes, my mother has brown eyes, you know, you can keep passing it along that way. Yeah, well, I mean, in Damien's case,

we know this to be fact. Right, yeah. Like, it's just, you know, I mean. No one should book this good. Yeah. I get it, fact. Right. Yeah. No one should book this good. I get it. I get it. The other thing though, I would go back to Damien, I'm not so sure there was a make

America great again earlier issue. I'm not quite convinced of that. I think it was much more about the United States, it didn't have that... It was an era of Jim Crow. It was the era of white supremacy. It was the era of white supremacy. It was the era of anti-Chinese... I mean, we have the Chinese Exclusion Acts and we're going to have the Gentleman's Agreement and with... That was kind of pushing out Japanese citizens. We have segregation of Mexican and Mexican Americans. And I think in many ways this was a moment

Eugenic's essentially says white supremacy is The norm it's the scientific norm. Well, it's scientific racism, right? I mean that's really what it is and think about social Darwinism and those other things are frenology all these that's the study You know the study of skulls those big heads, right? This could be a criminal But a lot of it says like there is something we can look at this these bodies and tell you something But it's that fixed and immutable and it essentially says white guys should be on top, right? I mean, that's really what it's saying right and certainly white women were part of eugenics eugenics

And in fact many who works at a place called cold harbor lab or cold spring no card No, you got me double. Anyway, there's a laboratory in New York and I should know that yeah But they were women who did a lot of that work right fit women Yeah, so, you know, it's not just men but well, so the so the tie to making America great, I just I'm thinking of we now have a president who in Minnesota talked about how they all had good genes, who recently said people are coming in and poisoning our blood and who is literally looking back at the 1870s as the time, the golden time.

And so I'm combining that with my understanding of the debate over the Spanish-American War. Half of that debate was, do we really want to pull in more brown people into our empire? No, I totally agree with that. I'm just not sure that at the turn of the 20th century, they're thinking about me in America. Great. Yeah. But I think for sure it's disturbing. Yeah, to see it to see to hear references that sound very eugenic in this from this current administration. I mean, Musk talks Elon Musk talks a lot of I find him or he's

doing his ideas are right out of Absolutely, it like my students and I were talking about a little bit ago allegedly Was that? That Elon Musk has had like 14 children What is that if not positive eugenics, you know in his mind and and he said very similar things And you know Here's a man who was concerned with I mean he he has recently said that our immigration system is allowing for replacement And that kind of stuff like it's it's you know, I don't even have to draw the line

You know the the the the the stain has dragged forward Yeah to that Yeah, go ahead. Just just you know what what strikes me about the the heritability aspect of this whole theory Is it's Lamarck ism, isn't it? I mean, it's You can't you can't even really call it social Darwinism because it's social Lamar chism it's it's this idea of You know all of these kinds of things somehow being heritable and let's let's completely overlook the social

Context in which women have children out of wedlock. Let's let's completely ignore You know their their social circumstances Let's completely ignore their social circumstances, the sexual politics in the households, in the neighborhoods, or whatever you want to say that they're living in. Let's completely ignore, when we're talking about criminality being passed on, let's just completely ignore poverty as a social force. And we want to lump all of it in, we meaning they of course, but you get what I'm saying. They're trying to lump all of these things in as being genetic. And there's obviously a political agenda at work, but it's also based in this really immense

ignorance, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, the mark theory, the markism really comes out and then eugenics overtakes it in many ways. Although, and so I love that you have that reference. I think the thing that makes eugenics slightly distinct is that it's really flexible. It's just constantly shifts. So like in the 30s, we get blowback because you have anthropology, psychology, the rise of culture and the shifts

and that nature nurture debate. All of a sudden there's a shift and you have these new disciplines and folks are saying it's not just about eugenics. It's also about environment. And eugenicists are like, okay, but now there's something wrong with your environment. And for that reason, we need to sterilize you. Yeah.

Okay. Got it. Yeah, yeah. It's so malleable. And that's kind of the thing about eugenics is that it will constantly shift in turn. And then that's why in my book, I talk about a shift to what I called neo eugenics in the post-world war two era Yeah, it's very similar to eugenics, but it's not formalized in a movement We don't I mean we're not drawing on you know, the state of Virginia's eugenic law with buck-fee-bell

But it's the same idea is that genetic some Whether it's genetic or environment some people are inherently fit to reproduce, some are not, and that some can't be trusted to make those decisions. But I think that's kind of the thing about eugenics is like, it just keeps going. Yeah. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off at all. But do you think there's just in the mindset of eugenics proponents, do you think there's just something that ties it to this authoritarian kind of mindset of, oh am I about to step on? No, I just want to take a stab at it before our expert weighs in.

Okay, yeah. So finish your question. I want first crack at this if you don't Alright, um, I'm just I'm I'm hearing about like, you know, okay Well, you know, we figured out that you know, there's welcome to sociology welcome to anthropology and there's these other factors. Okay, cool I'll take that and I'll still say that we need to you know sterilize these people over here because Like we have to sterilize somebody I mean is there just some deep-seated need to exert some level of control like so go ahead Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna say yes because the people who keep coming up with these theories

Always end up at the top of the heap when they theorize There is some layer in there That keeps happening where you know Dalton Popano I'm trying to think of the other the other major players. I mean Teddy Roosevelt Hell we had a president say let's return to normalcy. They all want status quo when they were the dominant ones. And they always think they're the smartest one

or the bestest one in the room. So it's kind of the, well, this is what's important for the rest of y'all. And this is the best time because I'm at the top of the heap during this time. And so there's this desire to maintain a status quo once you get to what you think is the peak. That's what I'm thinking. It's not just an inborn, inherent need to kill other people's babies, or deny people the ability to have children. But it's the, I'm here now, there's been a lot of anxiety coming on because people who had vowels at the beginning of their name or at the end of their name

could just blend in and look white. So there's, there's Irish and Italian for you. And I mean, there were tests to keep them out. That's what the SAT was for. And so you have this need to create a norm to create an infrastructure that protects the norm, that keeps you on top so that your children can then benefit from all of your hard work. That plus a whole bunch of

citrus people in California. Okay. So those are my stabs at it. Becky, where did I go wrong? I mean, I think it also connects these larger questions of public health, but also public welfare. So if you think about this transition from eugenics to neo eugenics, very early we see it with post World War II, we have the expansion of the welfare state. And the rates of unwed pregnancy skyrocket after World War II. White women have the highest rates, let's be clear. In this period, welfare itself expands and then eventually you get to programs like the Civil Rights Act that say you can't exclude people based upon race.

So then you have folks of color who now have access to systems like welfare. And that means you're going to see rising rates of, for example, black women in this. And in direct response, we get the myth of the welfare queen. Black women are having babies to get on, so that the state will pay them not to work. Complete fallacy, right? It's totally not a thing. It's just a racist stereotype. Underneath it though are these two other factors, the expansion of the welfare state and access from, people and folks of color now have access to it. Rather than putting those together and saying,

hey, look, everyone has access or more people have access. Let's celebrate this. You're not deserving of access because it's this question of, we're, you have a rise of the white middle class, you have a rise in the middle class in general, but you have a bigger white middle class, and some folks are saying, I'm paying tax dollars,

and the state is expanding, and who's getting my money, right? I don't wanna pay for this, or I don't wanna pay for that. And really what, you know, when you're providing welfare payments, it's saying, I support the raising of children. And what many folks are saying is, I only support the raising of some children and some

families. And that, again, for some of this is in Jim Crow America. So I think it's tied into those issues as well. And I don't think it's a surprise that we see high rates of forced sterilization in the 60s and 70s because we are at a moment of civil rights activism, feminist activism, Chicano and Chicano rights activism, Native American activism. I mean, we are at a point where folks are challenging the status quo. And at least in some instances, like the instance of Fannie Lou Hamer, who's a civil rights

activist, she is given something called a Mississippi appendectomy. So she goes in to have a uterine tumor removed at Sunflower County Hospital. And without her knowledge and certainly her informed consent, her entire uterus is taken out and she can't have a child. And it's done and she wants to, she's trying, she's actively trying to have children. These surgeries were not uncommon. Women would go in to have some form of abdominal surgery, a C-section, an abdominal tumor, an appendectomy and without their knowledge or informed consent, their fertility was taken. Their whole uterus was taken though.

This is not a tube of ligation. This is the removal of a uterus. And it happened in areas where there were civil rights activists. It happens to black women in the South and it happens in the wake of Brown v Board of Education, which has an end to segregation in public schools. And I think the message there is from white doctors, all right, the law may say this, but I'm still gonna exert my control.

I'm still gonna exert my authority, right? So I think those things are deeply connected too, right? Who gets to express their citizenship in full? Who gets to be supported by the state, right? I mean Many people were in favor of the GI bill, right? But we're like, but I don't want welfare or I'm not one of them, you know, right? I mean the number of times I have talked I Grandfather passed away quite a while ago, but we used to have conversations

I would call him every Sunday, and he would say, what did you teach this week? And I would tell him. And I remember asking him about the GI Bill, and he'd go, but I never had federal aid. I'm like, well, do you remember what your home loan was? And he would go, yes, I paid zero down on my first home. You know, and nope, you know, 0% interest,

and I didn't pay anything down. The federal government subsidized me because I was a soldier. I'm like, wow, uh-huh Let's have this conversation, you know, and he never fully bought my argument, but he would at least listen So it was a start sure but it's that same thing. I think it's tight I guess part of what I'm saying, I think it's tied up into questions about who gets to access State assistance and who is worthy of it quote-unquote and it's really tied to challenges to who has power.

Yeah. And who has control. And a lot of those sterilizations are about, because the forced sterilizations post-World War II tended to be, a few of them were through eugenic laws. But a lot of times it was an individual pushing out of bedside. Yeah, there's hospital policies or doctors who would-

Some were hospital policies, but some were just individuals being like, and sometimes the doctors thought they were helping patients. Here's a woman, she's poor, she has three children, she's struggling economically. I'm going to really strongly encourage her after I deliver her fourth baby to have her tubes tied because I think it will be better for her. In his mind, say a white middle class doctor or an upper class doctor working with a poor black woman, he thinks he's helping her, but he doesn't realize he's coercing her into something or he's doing something like saying, I'm going to tie your tubes.

And she's like, well, if you tie them, you can untie them. That would make sense, right? But that's not true. They're cauterized. They're swayed. You can't get them back. I mean, there is a surgery, but it wasn't perfected and it's still not great, but not at the time.

So I think there's those folks. And then there are some who are just like, you know, blatantly, I'm sick of paying for your children to be on welfare. So if you want me to serve you, you have to do this. Here's the quid pro quo. I deliver your baby. You get your tubes tied. Otherwise, hands off. And, you know, if you're talking about a rural doctor who's the only one who takes Medicaid, right? Well, where is she going gonna go deliver her baby, right? And if it's a complicated pregnancy in any way,

that's more leverage that he's gonna have. Yeah. Absolutely. Not only in the extortion aspect, but he could, in bad faith, say, you see these complications are due to the fact that you've had so many, and you could absolutely cloak. Again, you could mean well, bless your heart in a non-Texas way,

and yet still be absolutely coercive, and you can still be cloaking that coercion. It is complicated. I mean, then there were the real doctors. There were some, but I think they were the minority. I think many of them, especially in the 60s, really thought that they were helping people. They were not. They were exerting power they didn't have. The kind of catch with this is that there's no clear standards of informed consent. So if you don't have clear standards of informed consent, then that coercion can happen and there's no record of it. So we would see instances, California had very high rates of sterilization that targeted Mexican and Mexican American women and USC LA County Hospital in particular was notorious for this. And there

were physicians that would say to women while they were laboring, hands off, sign that consent form or I will not deliver your baby. Or a woman would refuse all through labor and delivery, but you stayed in the hospital for several days, usually five to seven days postpartum back in the day. And so they would then round on the patients and every time they would harass them to sign consent forms to be sterilized. And sometimes women would just break down. Other times there were women who didn't know they'd been sterilized and they'd go to their

six week postpartum appointment and they'd be like, hey, I'd like an I IUD or the pill and the nurse practitioner would be like, what are you talking about? You were sterilized six weeks ago when you had your c-section, right? And they were like what and it would be notes in the chart that they didn't know and what can you do at that point? so that you know without the Consent form and standards of informed consent a lot of that behavior could happen and no one would think twice about it. And doctors really did think, I mean, to kind of put their behavior in context, but in no way to excuse it, doctors were really working from kind of an outdated perspective, kind of forgetting that even at the turn of the 20th century, doctors practiced in their communities. And so you would go to church with your doctor.

Your doctor would be, you'd see your doctor's wife at the PTA. You were all in the same community and they were segregated communities. So doctors oftentimes felt that they had the right to act on their patient's behalf. And they kept that idea even though they moved into specialties and they started treating patients who were not in their communities and so It's it's definitely not okay But that is to kind of explain Yeah, yeah, can you explain the 120 rule?

I I found that fascinating and I think this is a good place to talk about it because we're talking about You know the the hospitals and such. Yeah. So this goes back to what I was saying at the beginning, which is that you can't look at coercive sterilization without looking at voluntary sterilization because in the 60s, there are, well, the pill comes out and everyone's like, this is the best thing ever. But by the end of the 1960s, the pill is under suspicion because women who take the pill have, I think it's a 4.4 times greater risk of developing blood clots than not. And there are women who had died of blood clots, haven't taken the pill. And then the IUDs come out and then we have the Dawkins-Shield fiasco and the Dawkins-Shield,

it was just essentially a very horrifying IUD that would embed in women's uteruses and rip them apart and cause horrible things to happen, sometimes even death. So what happens is women get used to contraception that's 100% effective, or 99% effective, 98% effective. And this is huge. That's why everyone's rushing to the pill in the IUD because for the first time ever, women who are using contraception effectively are not getting pregnant. If you were using a diaphragm or a condom, and even if you were using it right, there were fail rates, about

25%. Even if you use contraception religiously, you were probably going to have at least one unplanned pregnancy in your lifetime. So when the IUD and the pill comes out, women are like, this is it. But then there are these problems with it. And they're like, yeah, that's not for me anymore. Some of them are. But they're not willing to go back to the condoms and diaphragms. They're not willing to take the risk. And so some of them start to turn to sterilization. Problem is that hospitals have these 120 policies or 150 policies. And essentially they're called age parity policies. So your age times the number of children you have has to equal or exceed the number 120. So if I were 30 and I had four kids, 30 times 4 is 120, then I would

meet that threshold and if I can meet that 120 policy then I can turn to my hospital sterilization board and be like I've met your 120 rule I want to be sterilized and they'd be like Okay, we'll sign off on it. Would they need your husband to be there as well? For that part. Some did, some did not. Okay. Yeah, spousal consent. It would depend. Yes. Yeah. Four children. For a related to abortion, those are struck down in the 70s. But they keep popping back up. Yeah, but yeah, four kids at 30. And again, if you get older, then you can have fewer.

Right. So we're talking about in the sixties when having a child over the age of 40 was, you know, vanishingly rare. Oh, you're saying the number. The birth rate, the baby booms in? All right. So, people remember the birth rate. The baby booms in 1945 to 1965. Right. Yeah.

65 on, we're starting to see a decrease. And then you have concerns about overpopulation. This is when Paul Ehrlich and the population bomb come out. And so there are all these concerns that even, and what Ehrlich is saying is even those fit folks are having too many children. Right. We're literally going to overpopulate the planet. We're at two.

This is not good. Three billion at the time. Yeah. And well, but so then it runs into this question of can you even have a positive neo eugenics? Right. So it it's they're confusing. But what happens is that there are women

who feel they need to be sterilized, they feel strongly that they need to be sterilized, and they can't meet that threshold. And sometimes it's not the 120 rule, sometimes it's the 150 rule. So if you're 30, you'd have to have five kids in order to hit it. These policies are designed so women don't meet them. I mean, that was what these policies are designed so women don't need them. I mean that's that was what Yeah, I'm sorry. I just you know as a as a Catholic I'm looking at that like I'm sorry for kids. It's

Like really well Wow, so yeah, no, obviously the subtext is you know, we don't we don't want to do this So we're gonna we're gonna create this threshold And full disclosure here. Ed is very old and has one kid one child. Yeah, so exceptionally old so But keep harping on that there buck. Oh, yeah That's great, yeah Well to go back to the sterilization thing that you have women who can't get sterilized and they want to. Right. And they're white and they generally are working class, not so much middle class.

Some of them are middle class, white, middle and working class women. And they're like, this isn't fair. And some of them have medical issues. I've gotten pregnant on the pill or I've had a negative reaction to the IUD. I can't use these things, but I can't get pregnant. This is not gonna work for me. Or I have some kind of other health issue that makes it to a pregnancy

is really gonna threaten my health. And I don't wanna do this, I can't risk this. Especially because we're in the era before abortion's legal, right? So this is that context. So they turn to the American Civil Liberties Union, which connects with a group called ZPG, Zero Population Growth, and they fund a series of lawsuits that challenge the 120 rule. And they're successful. They knock them out with a case called Hathaway versus

Worcester City Hospital. And essentially, by the time this comes around, and I think it's 74, contraception has been legalized by the Supreme Court. Abortion is legalized in the first two trimesters. The court essentially, and this is an appellate court, says, well, sterilization is a form of contraception. Voluntary sterilization should be legal. Go for it. Get rid of these 120 policies.

But we had a series of these lawsuits leading up to it. When that happens, all of a sudden you have the legitimization of voluntary sterilization. Because before that, sterilization tended to be associated with individuals with cognitive disability or some other form of disability that was seen as like your reproduction would be unhealthy. With folks with cognitive disabilities, sterilization was done often in institutions both to prevent individuals from reproducing and possibly passing on bad genes, quote unquote. But also there were very high risks of sexual assault. And it was to protect the institutions against that. So if it was almost kind of, sometimes there were assumptions that young women

and older women with cognitive disabilities would be assaulted. And so this would be a way to prevent pregnancy. So no one would have to deal with it, so to speak. It was not protective for the women. It was protective for institutions. That's, I mean, that right there is a hell of a thesis. It was not protective for the women.

It was protective for the institutions, which, I mean, having read through your entire book, that is a through line that continues. I've been thinking about the Philadelphia lawyers. There were a bunch of them who seemed very concerned with whether or not people were being sterilized in a neighborhood that wasn't their own. Like, they kept kind of being a part of that. also was that here we are in the people during the time of the nuclear bomb and nuclear proliferation that leads to them thinking that overpopulation is a biggest issue when they're in the shadow of us having dropped nuclear bombs and wiped out people and the constant threat of nuclear annihilation. And like these two things are existing at the same time.

And yeah, well, think about the rise. Think about the baby boom. I mean, the baby boom was seen. Well, first of all, my friend and colleague, Wendy Klein, would argue and does argue that the baby boom is positive eugenics. Yes. Right. Absolutely. And so there's that part. And then there's also

the baby boom and folks coming out of the depression and World War II having families was in the middle of the nuclear era, right? Was a way to say, I'm still going to keep going. Right. I can keep living. I can't. It was a form of resistance in some ways. Yeah. I can keep living. It was a form of resistance in some ways. But again, we're in this issue where what we would consider to be private decisions are public conversation. And especially in terms of individuals who are deemed unfit to reproduce that their reproduction becomes a public preoccupation We don't see as much attention paid to

You know the individuals who are filing lawsuits to get the 120 rule overturned Yeah, there's there's there's something again I go back to the I'm the smartest guy in the room syndrome that seems to occur with I go back to the I'm the smartest guy in the room syndrome that seems to occur with people who are really good at building transistors suddenly think they have something to say about women's reproduction or poor people's reproduction and things like that. Looking at you Mr. Shockley. But it's that transfer to expertise and with that transferred expertise comes the absolute and total assumption that because I am smart I must be able to make these decisions for other people. So there's also a transferred authority that comes with that expertise because after all I'm really good at doing this

specialized thing over here that is measured in money and I'm really good at doing this specialized thing over here that is measured in money and I'm going to use that measure in money to now value other people's choices and why they should be taken away and again it's one of those intuitive arguments and and again this is during the time of the Moynihan report this is during the time of all kinds of things where people are like I mean you go back to Buck v. Bell, three generations of imbeciles is enough. These people have cost us two million dollars, you know, throughout all their generations. Like there's a constant commodification of life and so

it would make sense that the attack on people's dignity and the attack on people's autonomy is also absolutely intrinsically tied to that. I mean, I think back to Reagan starting us up on No Fault to Wars. And I wonder if that ran, we did a four episode part on GI Joe, the cartoon that we all grew up with.

And it was was that came out right as Reagan had taken down the FCC and and allowed cartoons and now we had you know latchkey kids and all this and it absolutely dovetailed with the no fault divorce but I wondered if there was interaction between neo eugenics and the no fault divorce thing because now you've got a lot more single parents. I have not, that's a good question. I've not seen any relationship between those. I took the long way around the elbow

to get to the wrist there, sorry. Well, there is an interesting kind of side note, because when we think about voluntary sterilization, we tend to think about women. But because of that 120 rule, there was a period of time when folks were looking for voluntary sterilization, but women couldn't get it. Men could. Right.

The vasectomy has been the same since the 1890s. There were very few policies and unlike tubal ligation, which at that time was open abdominal surgery, it looked almost like a C-section. We don't get the laparoscopy until the early 1970s, and then you can start having outpatient surgery or they call it band-aid surgery. You could put one or two, maybe two small incisions, sometimes one, but we don't see that happening. So there is this small period when husbands are undergoing vasectomies. And then we have this kind of swinger culture where there are some American men who are like,

hey, well, cause no one's thinking, like AIDS isn't on the scene yet. I'm fixed ladies, right. Yeah, I mean, really they were like, I am the best. Like you don't even have to use a condom with me, you know? And they talked about this like, now I can go out this like everything's curable by penicillin. So, yeah, I mean, because the worst you were going to do is get the clap. Right. I mean, it was kind of like this was very much the free love movement.

I mean, so there is this kind of interesting thing where you can see some men really talking about like, I don't want to have children, but I would like to sleep around. So a vasectomy is great. And hey, by the way, no one's restricting my access to sterilization. Right. No one's getting needing my spousal consent. Oh, of course not. Yeah. It's interesting. Back in the day before Facebook, before the internet was really a

thing, there was BBS culture, bulletin board systems. And a lot of the guys in the Bay Area who ran BBSs were these older guys in the community. So you can start to see how the creep factor is building, but there are older guys in the community who had kind of come into their own in the 70s. And it's kind of piggybacked on the ham radio culture and stuff like that. And we would all get together locally because you would call from your computer into someone

else's computer, right? And then you leave messages for each other. It's very fun. And email before email was cool. And I remember posting something along the lines and I was like 15. I was like, man, I really feel bad for the guys who got vasectomies in the 70s Just to turn around and find out that AIDS is AIDS is here And one of the guys that ran the BBS is like, hey

And it absolutely was it wasn't buyer's remorse, but it was like, you know, he thought he'd had the golden ticket And there was only a small window a window to get into the wonka factory there Yeah, yeah, so but it was and then good day, sir, right? But it was always the same kind of guy to that that seemed to fit that bill at least in the Bay Area spelling of patchouli Patchouli? I hope. Um, so, uh, Becky, could you explain the Hartman plan?

Oh gosh. I haven't thought about the Hartman plan in like 10 years, Damien. The Hartman plan was, um, I guess I just dated how old this book is, right? It also shows how long it takes me to get around to reading a friend's book. OK, so there was a group called AVS, which is the Association for Voluntary Sterilization. And I think they really epitomize that shift from eugenics to new eugenics. They had been it had been a collective, essentially, of folks. I mean, Margaret Sanger was part of this group, lots of folks who had been in kind of the

birth control circles and many liberal circles and eugenics circles. And then eugenics kind of goes out of favor after World War II. Like hardcore eugenicists don't re-nig it. But in the wake of Nazi genocide, not many folks are willing to be like, yeah, I really want to be outwardly a part of this. So this group had started as the Sterilization League of New Jersey and they kind of changed their name a bunch of times and they really kind of service that transition between eugenics and neo-eugenics.

And essentially they're trying to find ways to spread sterilization as a form of contraception. And they're doing this in the early 60s, late 50s, early 60s. And so they come up with this Hartman plan that essentially is trying to people write in and they'll give you a loan to go get sterilized. And it's actually, I really haven't thought about these for quite a long time, but it was one of my best moments in the archives because the AVS archives are at the University of Minnesota. They have this wonderful social welfare collection and it's just a lovely place to do research. You don't always know what you're going to get before you get to the archives. I was a graduate

student when I got there a couple of times. The first time I was a graduate student and I'd gotten a grant to go and I was like, this is amazing. I was sleeping on someone's couch and it was not a big grant but I opened up. Was it bigger than the grant that they gave people to sterilize? I mean not if you put them in the same year's term. Adjusting for inflation you got less to do the research than people got to get sterilized. I mean I think the way I did, I was going to school in Pittsburgh and I think, and this was in Minnesota, I'm pretty sure I had to fly down to Atlanta and then back up again on one of the flights

in order to like afford it. So, and then I slept on someone's couch for a week. But I walked in and I actually got the letter, like they had boxes and boxes of boxes of letters and people would write in with their stories and then AVS would write them back. So you got to actually see like why does someone want to be sterilized? Right? What? And sometimes it was sob stories. Sometimes they were trying to be very persuasive. Other times it was very high and mighty. Like, you know, my son needs to get his act together

and is not, you know, clearly's gotten the wrong, clearly I've got my husband's genes, not me, not mine, and needs to stop doing this. There was a series of them that you would see from families with a child with a disability who they were very concerned about sexual assault or they were concerned about just explaining, being able to explain contraception and having that information be used in a way that they wanted it to be used, or they would say be used appropriately. And so sometimes you would see those stories,

but I mean, I can have this, I'm like envisioning a huge table. Think of like the ones you probably have in your classrooms, the ones that don't have desks in them. If you have like those long tables Stacked with boxes and all of them filled with letters I mean I really was just like alright rock paper scissors Pick a box from the A's pick a box with that, you know that start with the letter D and just going through them

but dozens of boxes all Handwritten letters and then sometimes you would get follow-up letters. Sure. Thank you so much. The sterilization was amazing. And every once in a while you'd get someone who'd be like, literally like I live in Appalachia and we can't,

we're struggling to survive and this helped us. We couldn't afford contraception, but this really helped us. They're all very, very different, but that was truly one of those moments when the archives speak. Because so often you read about the organizations, like AVS's pamphlets and paraphernalia,

that was everywhere. But people writing into them, that was one of my best archival moments. And that they kept it. They did. I mean, I had to sign a form that said I would not use the same names. But I still, you know, I still have them.

They're all, you know, and they're not redacted. I think now because we have different privacy laws for medical records than when I was doing the original research for this, it would be much harder. But I did have to get permission from the organization that essentially took over AVS. We like faxed the consent back in the days of the fax machine. Right. I remember being in the archivist office and getting the like the fax consent and I signed it. We faxed it back to them on that thermal paper. You know, oh, I love paper archives.

I mean, the digital ones are so much easier, but there's nothing like having and you have to make paper copies at the time. So you'd say this is why I had to fly to Atlanta, because I had to spend $500 on Xerox copies. Yeah, I was going to say, the Xerox copies, when, yeah, that's a big expense you'd have to worry about there. Yeah. I mean, I won't even tell you about the Fireproofs boxes in my garage. The number of them that have research for my first book and some other, and my husband,

when we moved to this house, was was like I'm not moving these again Never again And nowadays we can do it all just by taking photos with with a device we hold in our pocket it's Ridiculous now getting there are apps that you can and writing in those documents too, which is like quite amazing But I'm a lead. I still like to actually have I Love to take things home from the archives. I don't do it anymore I don't think anyone will Xerox for me and I don't have any more room in my garage, but I do really love

There's something wonderfully tactile. That too. About it, you know, and the smell of slowly disintegrating paper, that old book. Oh, yeah. I love the smell of archives, yes. I have to explain this to my students and when I take them into the university archives and it smells very fresh, they're like, we have no idea what you're talking about. And I'm like, just wait till a box comes out and the archivist will do like bring it

I'm like bring me a box from the 70s, right? I'm like stick your nose in yeah, they get it actually I worked at the archives and I curated the oh god I'm gonna get his name wrong because I just saw a movie with a similar name the Eisenberg the mayor the Sacramento mayor who left all of his stuff to us. He was a mayor in the 70s. He left everything to archives and I got to read through everything to curate it. And I'm not a professional public historian, but I was a student who was a history student. I think I was still working my way through my BA.

And I curated everything from his sophomore year in high school working my way through my BA and I curated Everything from his sophomore year in high school all the way through his mayorhood All kinds of real cool stuff and yeah, it smelled exactly like that, you know, it's funny We talked about, you know the importance of paper like we opened the show by talking about Well, I don't know if we were recording at that time But the the death threat that I remember is the one that someone took the time to write, not the one that someone emailed.

And you remember those things. It's that little personal touch. I don't know what that white powder was, but it smelled like almonds. It was nice. It was, I don't know. It just, you know. You know, and the amount of effort they went to

to cut out the little boxes from the magazine pages. Right, and replace my eyes in a picture. It was, you know, it's that little touch. Personal touch. It really... Yeah. So, um, I know we're wrapping up on time here. There's a couple questions I really wanted to ask you. One was You spend a good amount of time linking Ostensibly voluntary sterilization to forced sterilization.

You point out that it's nigh impossible to know the true number given records and given how people didn't keep the records. How out on a limb did you feel making the claims that you made? They were all footnoted. I did not make anything up. There were records. So, there were a couple cases that come through. There were many cases, dozens of cases related to sterilization. And I use estimates from those.

And the reason we know them is that a lot of the forced sterilizations happened with federal funds. Some of them without, but once we have federal funds involved, specifically, it was health, education and welfare at the time, which becomes health and human services. And so when there are sterilizations that are performed using federal funds, so federal funds went to support family planning planning clinics like in Montgomery and they sterilize young black women like some, I mean the big case there were two girls who were 12 and 14. Right. The sisters.

Yeah, the Ralph sisters. So those are where I'm getting the numbers and there are sterilizations in North Carolina that are done using eugenic laws. And so all of those numbers I'm pulling together. So I'm not kind of making it up. I can't. But that's where I'm getting the numbers. And it's the federal funds oftentimes that give us the best estimates. Although I think there's a lot that we don't. I think there were probably thousands, if not tens a lot that we don't I think there were probably thousands if not tens of thousands We don't know the other one. I would say is that we know there were sky-high rates of sterilization on Reservations that were done through the Indian Health Service. It was like 45%

Yes. Yeah of women of childbearing age and There was of women of childbearing age. And there was a Native American doctor who calls for a GAO, Government Accounting Office investigation because she sees a patient who asked her for a womb transplant. And she says, what do you mean? She goes, well, I've heard of kidney or liver transplants. I'd like a womb. I've had my uterus removed. And this woman is in her early 20s. And the doctor is like, what are you talking about?

And these are the four sterilizations that had been happening through IHS services. And so again, when you have federal funds, they're traceable, especially in this instance, if you have someone who goes to her congressman, she goes to it. There's a south congressman, she goes to it. There's a South Can't remember if it's a congressman or senator But essentially a representative an elected representative is like what's going on here and he calls for an inquiry And then we actually have clinic records in that so That's where I pulled them. Okay as more more like were you is there more that you wanted like it's one of those

You know, it's true, but you can't prove it kind of thing or and you had to pull back just that Yeah, you could see it especially with USC LA County Hospital surgeries I have There was a class action case magical bequill again and the court transcripts are at UCLA, Chicano Studies Library, Chicano Studies Library. So having gone through all of those, the affidavits from the women are heartbreaking. But it's very clear the way that the coercion is happening that I don't think it was specific just to these 10 women.

And I also had records that I was able to find at Santa Barbara, at UC Santa Barbara, that appear to be, I think I knew who the author is, but his name was not written on it so I can't definitively say, but I'm pretty sure I know which whistleblower it is. Or essentially it's clinic records and it tells you briefly, you know, name, age, when the person was sterilized and what, and like a brief snippet of the story, if you will. And so I can see that there are dozens that it goes on for pages and pages. And again, those are just the ones that are known So even at that hospital alone, I think

And if it's at that hospital then like which I think your book does a really good job of pointing out like here the ones that I've proven and So, you know, it's it's well and I would say it's not even me proving them. It is me listening to the women There who came forward and said, this is not okay. And they sue or they speak out. And really it's because of their testimony and their effort that they left a record that then I can go recover. But it really is their work and I'm trying to honor them because without them this would have been without them speaking out and standing up for themselves and their families and their communities

Right We would have nothing to recover Is there anything that you took out that you really wish you could have kept in I Didn't take it out Well, I did actually I Wish I had done more with disability. I was not very cognizant of disability history. I was certainly not well versed in it. And I didn't have folks where I was studying that were conversant in it. And I wish I had taken that tactic and that tact and really thought more about disability as a category of analysis and how disability fit into it. Thankfully,

someone gave me the opportunity to do better. And I'm finishing, well, I finished, I'm revising an article for a collection, a disability Studies reader that looks at the Ralph girls story They were the girls in Montgomery who were sterilized at 12 and 14 and I'm now writing that story and I think the way it needs to be told a more complicated way so That's what I would I would do differently and I think I would like to have woven it There are a couple stories I could have added and I would have liked to have woven it through

better Yeah Were there any parts of your research that like? When I was doing my research nowhere near the level that you do obviously, uh, but when I was doing my research for Idiocracy, right? I read the the book on the jukes From like I think it was the 1915 book Yeah I read it and I had to take a nap because I was so depressed like I had to take a depression nap

Was there anything that either depressed or enraged you so much that you quit working for the day? Or is that not how grants work? for the day? Or is that not how grants work? So that was just to get to the archive, you know, otherwise I had to kind of get my work done. Um, I don't know that I was unable to keep working, but I know that though I felt the weight of telling the stories a lot. I really felt a responsibility to get it right and to make sure I understood what the sources and the women were saying. And especially because I don't look like a lot of them. A lot of the women who were forcibly sterilized,

the vast majority were poor women of color. And I am not. And I wanted to be very, very mindful of not speaking for them and not making assumptions about what they were saying and in any way kind of asserting a privilege with that. And so I really that was where I felt I spent a lot of kind of emotional energy. Am I reading this correctly? Am I honoring this person? Am I understanding this person as she wants to be understood? That good. That was the one that that was really where I felt the most kind of weight of it. Did you have somebody that that that you could bounce off of and hey, am I doing this? Oh, oh, yeah. I had many reading groups. I had wonderful advisors and and they were very good, especially my advisors were very good at encouraging empathy and challenging me to read empathetically and to read, being very mindful of where I

am in relation to where the women I studied were. And so certainly I had had them and I had a bunch of student, you know, friends, we had writing groups and those folks and then just the folks you had to go get beers with because you know, this is a heavy topic. Did you have a process for extricating yourself from it or for obviously not letting it go because you teach this stuff but like now that you finished this now like to pull yourself out of the severity of that, the gravity of that? Or is it just this is the job and here you go. I well, for most of when I was writing this book, I was an avid cyclist.

And so I absolutely you know, I was I was riding hundreds of miles a week. And I think one of the things I love the most about it is that I was present, you know, and I was usually riding with people bigger and stronger than me. And I needed to not overlap their wheels. And so I think one of the things I absolutely loved about that was just you just kind of hit the zone or you hit the pain cave and you're in it and it just forced me to be in there in that moment and it would clear my head enough. I did have a morning ride.

I probably actually rode it when I was around when you were at Sac State where I would teach. I think I taught like two classes Tuesday, Thursday, and then I had like a Tuesday night class. And so I would essentially be on campus for 12 hours. I had a Wednesday morning ride and we would ride 50 miles and I wouldn't start working until noon. And that was just the way that I could clear my head from all the teaching and whatever else was going on and then start again and then Over the weekends for sure Yeah Wow

so Say again hard stuff though. Yeah. Yeah, I had other questions, but I don't want to overstep that I think that's a that's probably a good button to put on it You you wrote the book ten years ago or it came out I think that's probably a good button to put on it. You wrote the book 10 years ago, or it came out 10 years ago. More than that. Yeah, it came out 10 years ago. Yeah. Oh my God. I forgot what year it was.

Like what year it is now. But like have... I'll close with this. Where, where has been how to put this? Um, where have you seen the impact of this book? Be the most positive I'm not sure I will be really clear and say I don't teach it. I don't I know lots of people teach their own books. I just Don't feel right doing it. I you know, I earn the tiniest amount of royalties It's not a lot but still having students have to pay for something I've written that I could potentially benefit I don't do so. I don't talk about it

I see it in the classroom and that I tell the stories in the classroom But I don't teach my book necessarily as a book so the students definitely tend to Connect to that and certainly within my peers it was One of the first books to talk about this time period and it was the first book to talk about voluntary sterilization and to put the two trends together I guess I would say teaching, especially the magical case,

and teaching eugenics in California on a campus like Sac State that has a eugenic legacy, and I teach about Gaty, and I have my students, in fact, they just submitted an essay about Gaty last week in my lower division history medicine class. essay about Gaty last week in my lower division history medicine class. That has been poignant because I can tell the stories and then ask them what they think. And when it's on the campus that you're at, it means something different, I think. And also given who I, given, you know, Sac State is a Hispanic serving institution,

I've had more than one student come up and say, I've had relatives who were sterilized. Or sometimes they show parts of the movie, No Mas Babies, where they've said, has this happened to my, could this have happened? You know, in this horror, the times that that's happened, the chronology has been off and I

we've kind of been able to go back and go, no, your grandmother would have been, you know, alive or would have been sterilized if it had happened. It would have been the 80s or the 90s, not in the 70s. But certainly history is relevant in California.

Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for for coming on and doing this with us. It's it's I'm honored that you would agree. And I'm grateful that we got to talk about this because it's number one, it's an amazing it's an amazingly well written book. It is dense. It is it is still accessible which those are two of my favorite things so and it talks about

something that absolutely like you said is is absolutely alive right now so I want to thank you for coming on we're going to I don't transition well, so we're going to now pivot to plugging things and so I'm gonna I'm gonna start by plugging Even though you don't teach us in your classes I think everybody should go out and buy fit to be tied sterilization and reproductive rights in America at 1950 and 1980 By dr. Rebecca Kluchen, it's available in all the places where you can find books And if not, let us know and we'll talk to those people about finding more books

So that's what I'm recommending Ed. What are you recommending? With with all of the respect in the world to our guest. I'm going to recommend some escapism our guest, I'm going to recommend some escapism. This has been amazingly enlightening. Thank you. I learned a lot just in this conversation, so thank you very much for being here. I want to second what Damien said a moment ago. But what I'm going to recommend, because it's in the vein of what I'm actually trying to study right now, but fictitious, I'm going to recommend, because it's in the vein of what I'm actually trying to study right now, but fictitious, I'm going to recommend Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey Mature and series of novels. Specifically, the first book in the series, Master and Commander.

You may recognize the title from the movie that came out a number of years ago. The novel is very different. The movie took a couple of books from very different points in the series and kind of tried to mash them together. But his prose is absolutely beautiful. He describes sailing in a way that is meditative and gorgeous and helps you forget all kinds of ugliness in the real world.

And so I very strongly recommend the Aubrey Mature in series of novels by Patrick O'Brien. Wonderful. Thank you. Becky, what are you recommending for people to read or to watch? It's any media. Well, I actually just finished the Legendborn series, which is not done yet. But it is I think Tracy's

her first name. Dion is her last name. It's a YA series my daughter was obsessed with. And so when we were over spring break, I read all of them. And it essentially takes the Arthurian legend and it puts it on the UNC campus with a young black woman who's the protagonist. And it is full of medical history, hoodoo,

and ancestor worship. And it gets at all of the power structures. And it really reframes the Arthurian legends. And it puts a young black woman at the center as really the savior. But she is confronted by racism and sexism and classism. And as my daughter would say, the thing she likes so much about the character is that she's an overall badass. She calls attention to all of these. She gets all the microaggressions and certainly the overt aggression. She calls them out and she refuses to kind of play into them or accept them. So it's lovely. I'm not, there is, there are references to rape, so it is certainly hard in that way.

But talk about, it is escapism with the history nerds in it and just wonderful magic. So that is my, the third book, I can't remember, The Legendborn and then Bloodmark marked is the second and then oath bound bound I looked it up cuz you were describing it was like oh my god. Okay. It is so good I am really I definitely geeked out over it Nice. Yeah, I'm gonna recommend that to my daughter

Yeah, you said well she's reading Octavia Butler right now, okay, so yeah I don't think my daughter picked up on all of the violence That you don't see it's not on the page, but it's alluded to I'm not sure she understands Like I think she didn't focus entirely on all of that Understand like I think she didn't focus entirely on all of that Yeah, I probably will cuz she she watched battle not battleship down watership down And I mean there's very much like you and you go, you know that yeah, so But but cool. Thank you

Ed where you don't want to be found ever where they find us We collectively can be found on our website at wabba wubba wubba geek history time comm And you can go through our archives and find any number of things to start your journey through our through our our with And then of course we can be found on the Apple podcast app on with and then of course we can be found on the Apple podcast app on Spotify and on the Amazon podcast app and wherever it is that you have found us Please take the time to give us the five-star review that you know, we deserve and hit the subscribe button and

Where can you be found my friend? I do want to be found because I'm gonna be at the comedy spot Let's see by the time this drops, you missed the July 11th show. So I will tell you right now, our host. It does. Our host Mark Berg of nine years has moved. He's moved on. And he is now in taking college classes in engineering. He's going to be an engineer.

So now his, I don't wanna say replacement, but the next person who came in is an amazing host, Emily Sood. And I think that this will drop before the August 1st show. So go buy tickets at saccomedyspot.com for the August 1st show and the September 5th show and the October 3rd show just in case this releases later For capital punishment to myself Justine Emily You know we're gonna get some really excellent guests in there and getting people to pun and battle and win

Who knows somebody might take the belt off us. So it'll be a lot of fun. Bring $15 for the ticket and then bring another 20 or 25 for merch, because we got really cool merch. So August 1st, what did I say, September 5th and October 3rd. Comedy Spot Sacramento, 9 p.m. on the first Friday. And Becky, do you want to be found in any way shape or form?

I can be found at Sacramento State. Okay good get in the Sac State take classes I just want to say when you said oh, yeah when I was teaching my lower division medicine class I'm sitting there going like I learned from nothing but Ferpers. I really just hit things at the wrong time from nothing but Ferpers. I really just hit things at the wrong time. Cause I looked at the catalog, cause my daughter loves looking at catalogs. And we looked at the catalog for Sac State and I was just a gog at all of the amazing history

that y'all are doing now. Well, thank you. And you know, your daughter and your son are always welcome to come to class. At any time during spring break, send them over. Absolutely. Yeah, history of medicine's fun. I get to teach 120 of our health science students, so folks who are going into, they want to practice medicine.

That's great. They have to take history classes, so you might as well take a history of medicine class. Yes, there you go. They're amazing. Perfect. Yeah, they're great. Great. Well, Dr. Becky Kuluchin,

thank you so much for being on our show, and I'm gonna keep saying doctor because it makes us look cool. But absolutely. For Geek History of Time, I'm Damian Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock. And until next time, keep rolling 20s.