Involuntary Sterilization of Black Women Systematically Practiced Across South

Through the 1950s, hospitals and clinics across the South routinely perform involuntary sterilizations on Black women, often during childbirth or other procedures without informed consent. North Carolina's eugenics board sterilizes nearly 8,000 people between 1929 and 1974, disproportionately Black women and girls as young as 11. Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Virginia maintain eugenics programs targeting Black women deemed 'unfit.' The practice reflects medical system racism that treats Black women's reproductive capacity as a public problem to be managed rather than a right to be protected.