Director of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare’s (HEW) Population Affairs Office, Carl Shultz, estimated that the government funded 100,000 to 200,000 sterilizations in America, paralleling the 250,000 sterilizations that took place under the Nazi Regime (Davis, 129). In the 1960’s and 1970’s, the nation experienced a population scare after Professor Ehrlich proposed his theory of a “population bomb”, which stated that an increase in population would lead to food insecurity due to the environment’s inability to support such a large amount of people. (Put cite) The threat of overpopulation pushed the nation to increase birth control in the name of the public good. However, common fixed beliefs, called hegemonic ideologies, of hyperfertility …show more content…
Intersectionality can be described as the effect of overlapping of systems of discrimination, based on social categories like race, gender, and class, on an individual or group. White feminists did not understand why it was necessary to combat the racial systems that effected Chicanas. Chicanas faced ideologies of racial inferiority and hyperfertility, which contributed to the reasons why they were victims of forced sterilization. To combat forced sterilizations, Chicanas urged feminists to include a 72-hour waiting period for sterilizations and informed consent (Davis, 131). However, because white feminists at the time were focused on obtaining immediate rights to their bodies, they saw informed consent and a waiting period for sterilizations as inconveniences (Davis, 131). Failure to include protections for Chicanas allowed racial ideologies to affect birth controlling, leading to more forced sterilizations. While the Chicano movement did try to combat the racial economic barriers that Chicanas faced, they failed to understand the intersectionality of race and gender. Chicanas in the documentary No Más Bebés revealed that they did not tell their families about their sterilizations because women in their culture who could not give birth were deeply frowned upon. One women said she feared telling her husband about her coerced sterilization because she thought her husband would equate her to a prostitute and throw her out on the street. (No Más Bebés). Although including race as a factor birth control rights was essential to preventing continued forced sterilization, the Chicano movement wanted nothing to deal with the feminist movement because they saw birth control as a tool to destroy families. Chicanas, left unaccounted for in both movements, continued to be victims of
The Making of Chicana/o Studies discusses the historical development of Chicana/o studies from Civil Rights movements until today. In addition, the book written in 2011 by Rodolfo Acuña, one of the 100 most influential educators of the 20th century, identifies the mistakes and consequences of Chicana/o studies in the past and offers solutions for the future. It portrays the struggles of becoming Mexican and building of Chicano Studies, the sixties and the rise of the Mexican American youth organization, the trenches of academe, and the resist in the mainstreaming of Chicano Studies.
Chicana women have suffered oppression, racism, sexism among other problematics. Nonetheless, they have been able to face these difficulties and fight for their rights. Two main difficulties were faced by these women, the fact of being women and the right to use their cultural heritage, specially their home language. This motivated them to get involved in social movements to fight for their rights. They had played an important role in such movements which contributed with better conditions not only for themselves but also for all Mexican Americans.
Margaret Sanger was a birth rights advocate and in her later years, supported eugenics. Eugenics is the belief that all of the good human qualities can be the main characteristics instead of all the bad qualities in the human population. In the speech, Sanger believes that people with mental illnesses should have limited children or no children at all which proves that she supported negative eugenics and sterilization.
“According to the U.S. Census,” Muñoz writes, “by 1930 the Mexican population had reached 1,225,207, or around 1% of the population.” As a result the discrimination became more widespread and an overall greater problem in the U.S. Soon, this racism became propaganda and was evident throughout the media, “Patriots and Eugenicists argued that ‘Mexicans would create the most insidious and general mixture of white, Indian, and Negro blood strains ever produced in America’ and that most of them were ‘hordes of hungry dogs, and filthy children with faces plastered with flies [...] human filth’ who were ‘promiscuous [...] apathetic peons and lazy squaws [who] prowl by night [...] stealing anything they can get their hands on,” Muñoz writes. This exhibits the vulgar racism that evolved into the Chicano movement. The Chicano movement started with injustice in education.
In this essay, I will argue how the Chicanos in the U.S. have responded to the lack of inclusion in history, opportunities, to racism and violence because through time we have seen how the Chicanos have been part of the country history and what it came to be, but we have been left out of history. The Chicano helped build what the united states came to be, we are part of its culture since the treaty of Guadalupe was signed, but our path has not been easy, many have been victims of oppression, poor working conditions, lack of civil rights and segregation. I’ll argue not that the Chicano has been a victim but what he or she have done to change the way things were for our ancestors in this obscure past of our history, how we have come together
Latinos are perceived as a reproductive threat to America because it is believed that due to their traditions based in Catholicism, they
It seems as though race is not a substantial issue in the world today like it used to be. Everyone has a different background from where they come from and an ethnicity. Chicanos, Hispanics, Latinos, Mexican Americans whatever you wanna call them. They 're just people, right? Around the 1960s, many individuals in this group were faced with difficult issues throughout their lives.
As Chicana/os become aware of the unfair way they are treated they act on it through activism. In the 1960s the East Los Angeles Walkouts or Chicano Blowouts were by
Leta S. Hollingworth was an American psychologist who focused most of her research on giftedness, educational psychology, psychology of women, and the variability hypothesis. She conducted numerous studies to reject the variability hypothesis that deemed women for destined for mediocrity and did her dissertation on how women were not mentally incapacitated during menstruation (Held, 2010). Hollingworth wrote six articles on the social factors that contributed to the social status of women. (1) One being “Social Devices for Impelling Women to Bear and Rear Children,” this article focused on the eight social constructs that motivated and pressured women to have and raise children. Of the eight, seven were first proposed by E. A. Ross in his book
Some things that may have been unthinkable just 10 years earlier became a reality. “The birth rate fell below the replacement level for the first time ever, and a more liberal attitude toward birth control manifested itself.” (text 3). Birth control emerged as an option for couples, a choice that, just a few years earlier, was largely frowned upon and in certain situations considered blasphemous. Although the effects of the 1930s were primarily negative, some positive societal changes arose.
The argument over a woman’s right to choose over the life of an unborn baby has been a prevalent issue in America for many years. As a birth control activist, Margaret Sanger is recognized for her devotion to the pro-choice side of the debate as she has worked to provide sex education and legalize birth control. As part of her pro-choice movement, Sanger delivered a speech at the Sixth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference in March of 1925. This speech is called “The Children’s Era,” in which she explains how she wants the twentieth century to become the “century of the child.” Margaret Sanger uses pathos throughout her speech as she brings up many of the negative possibilities that unplanned parenthood can bring for both children and parents.
Margaret worked as a visiting nurse in the impoverished neighborhoods of New York City’s Lower East Side. After working with numerous patients that were poor, immigrant women suffering the health consequences of botched abortions and repeated pregnancies (“Margaret Sanger,” n.d.). Seeing women suffer was the catalyst which brought about her belief that the ability to limit family size was an essential component to maintaining women’s health and breaking the cycle of poverty. Therefore, Margaret redirected her attention from nursing to advocating for the use and legalization of birth control and contraceptives (Margaret Sanger,” n.d.). During this time, it was illegal to provide contraceptives information due to the Comstock Act passed by Congress in 1873.
In 1960, the first birth control pill was put on the market. This was the first time a woman’s reproductive health was in her own control. Ever since the 1900’s women have been fighting for the right to their own reproductive rights (“The Fight for Reproductive Rights”). With the upcoming presidential election the right to obtain birth control and other contraceptives for women could be jeopardized, and taken out of the control of the woman. Thus, the history of birth control, the statistics of how it affects today’s society, why women should have the ability to obtain it easily, and how if outlawed it would not only hurt women, but also the economy are all important topics in the women’s rights movement and very relevant in modern day society.
After the Birth mothers have had their three kids they are treated poorly after, they become laboros and aren’t treated respectively. Also, these “birthmothers” are having to have children at a very young age. The Birth Mothers don't get to see their children at all, ever. Some may argue that they are very important, they are the only people in the community that have kids. This is great but people should be able to have their own kids, because they will have more of a connection to the
In 1932, Aldous Huxley imagined and wrote about a world where designer baby technology is prevalent in his science-fiction novel, Brave New World. The technology would not come until many years later, but his ideas still hold up today. In the book, there were different classes depending on how genetically modified one was, including Alpha or Beta (“The Public Should Oppose Designer Baby Technology”). Outside of science fiction, though, is real science where an actual baby can be genetically modified before even being born. A designed baby is one that is purposefully shaped to be one way or another through processes including In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), where an egg is fertilized and genetically altered, and preimplantation genetic diagnosis