A Review of: “Kluchin, Rebecca M. Fit To Be Tied: Sterilization and Reproductive Rights in America, 1950–1980.”

Abstract

Kluchin, Rebecca M. Fit To Be Tied. Sterilization and Reproductive Rights in America, 1950-1980. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009. vii+ 269 pp. $49.95 (paperback). ISBN-13:978 08 13545271. In Fit to Be Tied, author Rebecca M. Kluchin provides a comprehensive historical account of American sterilization practices in the late 20th century. In the effort to control human reproduction and prevent individuals from procreating, women, particularly women of color, were sterilized against their will. Eugenics emerged at the beginning of the 20th century and intensified during the second half of the century. Calling this second wave of American eugenics neoeugenics, Kluchin investigates two issues: how the United States exercised compulsory sterilization during the second half of the 20th century, and how the intersections of race, class, and ethnicity influenced which women were targeted for sterilization. Toward these ends, Kluchin traces neoeugenics from its inception through World War II into the 1980s by identifying key individuals, legislation, organizations, and counterorganizations that influenced the movement. She also uses narratives of Caucasian women and African American women to illustrate their different relationships with reproductive freedom. Chapter 1 begins with an overview of eugenics in the early 20th century and then explains the shift to neoeugenics following the World War II baby boom. Both movements were founded upon reproductive fitness, which assesses men's and women's procreating abilities based on physical, mental, and social characteristics. However, the distinction between eugenics and neoeugenics lies in the transmission of these characteristics. Eugenicists believed that degenerative characteristics were spread through genes, while neoeugenicists believed that these same characteristics were spread through culture. Thus, the move from eugenics to neoeugenics is also one from a biological to a sociological argument. The next two chapters separate middle-class White women from lower-class White women and women of color based on reproductive freedom and the types of contraception available during the 1950s and 1960s. Options ranged from the Pill (oral contraceptives) and intrauterine devices (IUDs) to sterilization, and Kluchin explains that they were available at the discretion of medical practitioners. Although sterilization was often forced on women of color, it was not readily available to White women who requested it. Kluchin describes the discourse used to frame African American women and Mexican American women as unfit and explains how race, poverty, and welfare dependency were used to justify sterilizing women without their consent. Thus, while White women defined reproductive rights as having the ability to access sterilization, reproductive rights for women of color included the freedom to have children and raise them without interference from the government and medical or welfare institutions. In Chapters 4 and 5, Kluchin describes how White women and women of color fought to obtain their reproductive rights. Documenting activists' legislative efforts to get sterilization classified as contraception, Kluchin discusses the ways White women began working to get hospitals to change their sterilization policies. Conversely, women of color who had been involuntarily sterilized sought legal retaliation against the doctors and hospitals involved with their surgeries. …