Physician complicity in human rights violations: Involuntary sterilization among women from Mexico and Central America seeking asylum in the United States

Ottenheimer, Deborah; Huda, Zoha; Yim, Elizabeth; Atkinson, Holly G.

doi:10.1016/j.jflm.2022.102358

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…In the U.S., Black bodies were deemed impervious to pain, as J. Marion Sims performed countless gynecologic procedures on enslaved Black women without their consent or anesthesia-a series of experiments from which modern gynecologic surgery was born [79]. The term 'Mississippi Appendectomy' was coined by Fanny Lou Hamer to codify the rampant coerced sterilization procedures that were performed throughout the Eugenics Movement from the 1920s-1980s on over 8000 Women of Color throughout the U.S. South [80]; involuntary or inadequately consented sterilization continues to the present day among migrant women across U.S. detention facilities [81]. It is against this backdrop that FGM/Caffected women must navigate health care encounters, often involving an "othering"medical gaze, and negative care experiences amidst threats to their own personhood.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Health outcomes and female genital mutilation/cutting: how much is due to the cutting itself?

et al. 2023

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While Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) continues to garner global attention, FGM/C-affected migrant communities, who are often racialized minorities in the U.S., face additional challenges which may impact their physical and mental health and well-being. It has been proposed that an overly narrow focus on the female genitalia or FGM/C status alone, while ignoring the wider social experiences and perceptions of affected migrant women, will result in incomplete or misleading conclusions about the relationship between FGM/C and migrant women’s health. A cross-sectional study was conducted across two waves of Somali and Somali Bantu women living in the United States, (n = 879 [wave 1], n = 654 [wave 2]). Socio-demographics, self-reported FGM/C status, perceived psychological distress, and self-reported FGM/C-related health morbidity was examined against self-reported experiences of everyday discrimination and perceived psychosocial support. In statistical models including age and educational attainment as potentially confounding socio-demographic variables, as well as self-reported FGM/C status, self-reported discrimination, and perceived psychosocial support, self-reported discrimination was the variable most strongly associated with poor physical health and psychological distress (i.e., FGM/C-related health morbidity and psychological distress), with greater perceived psychosocial support negatively associated with psychological distress, when controlling for all the other variables in the model. FGM/C status was not significantly associated with either outcome. Discrimination, more frequently reported among ‘No FGM/C’ (i.e., genitally intact or unmodified) women, was most frequently perceived as linked to religion and ethnicity. Our findings are consistent with views that discrimination drives negative outcomes. In this population, discrimination may include the ‘quadruple jeopardy’ of intersecting relationships among gender, race, religion, and migration status. We find that self-reported experiences of discrimination—and not FGM/C status per se—is associated with adverse physical and mental health consequences in our sample drawn from Somali migrant communities living in the United States, and that social support may help to mitigate these consequences. Our findings thus reinforce calls to better contextualize the relationship between FGM/C and measures of health and well-being among Somali women in the United States (regardless of their FGM/C status), taking psychosocial factors more centrally into account.Clinical Trials.Gov ID no. NCT03249649, Study ID no. 5252. Public website: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03249649

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Health outcomes and female genital mutilation/cutting: how much is due to the cutting itself?

et al. 2023

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“…However, there are other smaller communities that have been discriminated against too, some only more recently having come to light. In Central America, the Garifuna peoples in Honduras have been discriminated against and put under pressure by clinicians to be sterilised or even not told they have been sterilised [52]. Such cases are only know about because of assiduous medical evaluation of those seeking asylum.…”

Section: Coerced Sterilisationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interference with and abuses of sexual and reproductive health and rights: a new proposal for classification and terminology

Rowlands

2022

The European Journal of Contraception & Reproductive Health

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There has been overuse of the term 'reproductive coercion', with a potential for confusion and weakening of messaging. This opinion paper suggests proposes a classification for the many and varied types of interference with, and abuse of, sexual and reproductive health and rights. It also stresses the need for accurate portrayal of behaviours, however uncomfortable this may be for survivors or perpetrators. There are a range of abuses including denial of access to services, control, pressure, threats, coercion and violence. Violence may consist of neglect, mistreatment, exploitation or sexual assault. Abuses are categorised sociologically, according to micro, meso and macro levels of influence. Many types of behaviour at meso and macro level contain elements of racism. It is concluded that the term reproductive coercion and abuse should refer only to micro level behaviour. Healthcare professionals should ascertain that no practices that could be considered abusive are taking place in their workplace.

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“…However, this health advantage has been found to diminish over time and with increasing duration of residence and acculturation to the US due to increasing exposure to the stresses of racism, discrimination, and other sociopolitical determinants of health, thereby producing a weathering effect across the life course and intergenerationally. 5 Furthermore, this paradox may not pertain to forcibly displaced populations such as refugees and asylum-seekers who have escaped war-torn countries having survived myriad human rights atrocities including gender-based violence and coerced sterilization, 7 and consequently lack these resiliency buffers upon their US arrival and represent a keenly vulnerable migrant subpopulation.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Impact of Racism and the Sociopolitical Climate on the Birth Outcomes of Migrant Women, Mothers, and Birthing People in the United States

Johnson‐Agbakwu

2022

Medical Care

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Physician complicity in human rights violations: Involuntary sterilization among women from Mexico and Central America seeking asylum in the United States

Cited by 4 publications

References 16 publications

Health outcomes and female genital mutilation/cutting: how much is due to the cutting itself?

Health outcomes and female genital mutilation/cutting: how much is due to the cutting itself?

Interference with and abuses of sexual and reproductive health and rights: a new proposal for classification and terminology

The Impact of Racism and the Sociopolitical Climate on the Birth Outcomes of Migrant Women, Mothers, and Birthing People in the United States

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