"I never figured out why they did that to me." Forced Sterilization is a HARD PASS.

He shakes his head at the clumsily typed, tersely written documents he shows me, now decades old, which he keeps in a plain clasp envelope. An operation of sterilization will be for the best interest of the mental, moral, and physical well-being of the said patient, and/or for the public good, the Order for Sterilization or Asexualization reads. “I never figured out why they did that to me.”

**Let me start this post by saying that forced sterilization, for whatever reason is not right. I do not care what messed up reason any crack-pot doctor can come up with, it's not right. On with the rest of the post. **

This week we read Belle Bogg's For the Public Good. In it, Boggs traces the chilling history of eugenics in America, tells the touching stories of North Carolina's sterilization victims, and goes inside the decade-long fight for justice. While reading this, I couldn't help but be disgusted by the fact that people that call themselves doctors and lawyers, who are supposed to be helping and protecting people, are ok with taking away someones right to have children. What's even worse is that they aren't even thinking about how it may make the victims feel. Literally, so much baggage comes with not being able to have children. Boggs states, "Because their inability to have children was not a consequence of biology but a decision made by another, they feel lifelong shame at being deemed “unfit.” Among a plethora of other problems (social isolation, depression, trouble in their romantic relationships just to name a few), these victims that are so called "broken" come out even more "broken"! How was that not taken into account by these doctors when taking their right to have children? They're afraid of these "unfit" people having unfit kids BUT they're really just making them more "unfit". It just doesn't make sense!