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article concluded in link:
http://tharealm.diary-x.com/journal.cgi?entry=20020329d
29 Mar 2002
A Look at the Indian Health Service
Policy of Sterilization, 1972-1976
by Charles R. England
The purpose of this article is to examine the reasons for and results of the investigations prompted by physicians, tribal leaders, and senators concerning allegations that the Indian Health Service (IHS) was indiscriminately sterilizing Indian women across the nation. This topic brings up several questions of morality, ethics, and the law. These questions cannot help but be colored by the culture and values that we are taught. So it is from this perspective that we look at the sterilization policies and philosophies that were at work within the IHS-PHS, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) from 1972 to 1976. It was during this period that the greatest number of Indian women were put under the knife for a plethora of medical, social, and monetary reasons.
This article consists of six categories which will: explore the federal relationship with American Indian tribes; describe personal accounts from women who were sterilized and their attitudes toward family planning; explicate state and federal policies regarding informed consent and sterilization; examine the contractual relationship between IHS and private practices; consider the U.S. General Accounting Office investigation of IHS sterilization procedures; and examine the meaning behind the statistics of population growth. Finally, it will analyze the historical relevance of this topic to the model of internal colonialism under which the U.S. government operates....
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another article concluded in link:
http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/tbacig/st...alth/paper.html
Sterilization
In 1974 a Choctaw Indian physician named Connie Uri took notice at the large number of sterilization surgeries that had been performed. Out of curiosity and concern Dr. Uri chose to conduct a series of interviews with some of the women who had been sterilized at her Claremore, Oklahoma IHS hospital and surprisingly found that many of the women had been sterilized within a day or two of giving birth. An additionally surprising facet of Dr. Uri's investigation was the fact that non-standard procedures of sterilization had been performed. Normally the principle procedure used for purposes of sterilization is the tubal ligation, yet many of the women in question were given hysterectomies, a procedure normally reserved for women with cancer or other ailments. Possibly the most startling part of what Dr. Uri uncovered was the fact that many of the women sterilized claimed to have been harassed or coerced into signing the consent form and having the procedure. Their were many different coercive methods used to receive consent from women including: threatening to take away a mothers children and place them in foster care if the mother did not agree to the procedure, Not agreeing to perform an abortion on a woman if she did first not agree to be sterilized(Dillingham, 1977). Following Dr. Uriís initial revelation of the sterilization scandal many tribal leaders began to initiate investigations of their own tribes and IHS facilities and found that Dr. Uri's findings were not isolated to the IHS facility in question. One such investigation involved the Northern Cheyenne Reservation and the research efforts of the tribal judge, Maria Sanchez. Ms. Sanchez interviewed 50 women and found that 26 had been sterilized(Jarvis, 1977). In many of these cases the women reported being lied to or coerced into consenting to the procedure. As an example of the method of coercion used, several woman were told that they could still have children after the operation, while several other women were told that it was time they stopped having children as they already had enough. Though these investigations into sterilization were very disturbing they received little to no national attention, even after Dennis Banks and Lee Brightman embarked on the Longest Walk across the United States to hopefully draw some attention to the sterilization campaign, it was not until several months later that national attention was received (Means, 1995)....