In 1972, Dr. Constance Redbird Uri received a surprising request from an
Indian patient. "I've heared of kidney transplants," the patient said, "and I
want to know if you can give me a new womb."
At age 20, the alcoholic young woman had been sterilized by Indian Health
Service physicians for contraceptive purposes.
Years later, she overcame her drinking problems and wanted a family with
her new husband; she had not been informed that her proceedure was irreversible.
Dr. Uri, a Choctaw-Cherokee physician, discovered thousands of women
sterilized by IHS docters without informed concent.
One woman went to the doctor suffering from severe headaches. The doctor
told the woman that her head hurt because she was afraid of becoming pregnant,
and advised sterilization. The woman agreed, but the headaches persisted.
According to Dr. Uri, the woman later learned that she had a brain tumor.
According to a U.S. General Accounting Office study released in 1976, 3406
Indian women were sterilized between 1973 and 1976. Relative to the small
population size, the is an unusually large number of sterilizations. A close
examination of the GAO study indicates that this number is underestimated.
The GAO studied only four of the 12 areas serviced by the IHS. More i
importantly, the GAO used only IHS records, and did not study case histories,
observe patient-dictor relationships or interview women who had been
sterilized. In 1977, Dr. Uri estimated that more than one-quarter of all
American Indian women had been sterilized.
The most startling example of abuse among the 51 IHS hospitals had taken
place at the Claremore, Okla., hospital. Records for 1973 revealed that one
out of every four Indian women admitted to the hospital were sterilized,
including several women under 20 years old.
Emery A. Johnson, then-director of the IHS, told a congressional committee
in 1975 that IHS "considered non-therapeutic sterilization a legitimate method
of family planning... We are not aware of any instance in which such services
have been abused."
Dr. Uri countered, "To sterilize any woman for non-therapeutic reasons in
their teens or in their 20's is absolutely callous and criminal."
In violation of federal regulations, the most widly used concent forms did
not clearly inform women that they had the right to refuse the operation.
According to Dr. Uri's interviews with thousands of patients, most Indian
women were sterilized at the time they were giving birth, and their concent
was often taken while they were heavily sedated. Some women agree to
sterilization because they fear their children or welfare benefits will be
taken away if they refused.
Dr. Uri says the sterilizations resulted from "the warped thinking of
doctors, who think the solution to poverty is not to allow people to be born."
Instead of adjusting the factors which cause poverty and providing jobs or
day care, the U.S. government funded "health care" which practiced genocide.