To Those Who Were Denied the Future: The Women Involuntarily Sterilized by Power

How the forced loss of fertility exposes the deepest ethical failures in medicine and challenges obstetrics to defend autonomy with vigilance.

Across the twentieth century, thousands of women were involuntarily sterilized through policies and practices designed to limit reproduction among groups deemed unworthy or undesirable. These women lived in Nazi concentration camps, in United States public hospitals, in state-run institutions, and in clinics where consent was coerced or entirely absent.…