In his writing, Sims recalls how the women were held down by either each other or his assistant and butchered without anesthesia or consent. It’s worth noting that full anesthesia wasn’t widely used before the Civil War, but ether would have been available to Sims. He declined to use ether because, like many physicians of the era, he believed that the sensation of pain was bound primarily to race and, secondarily, to class.
I know that black and brown bodies have been brutalized and experimented on in the name of science since forever (Tuskegee experiments, birth control testing in PR), but I did not know about this. I am horrified. Take it down. We don’t need to celebrate another racist “hero”. Those poor women.😔
The one time Congress does something, and it’s something horrible. Way to care about us. 😡
But if men’s bodies became the primary site for birth control, would religious leaders shift their rhetoric and take issue with a technology like Vasalgel on the grounds that it prevents life on a massive scale? Or do debates about life only have meaning when they take place over women’s bodies?