According to Largent’s “Breeding Contempt” (following Robitscher), all sterilizations in the US in the 70s were in Virginia and none were in the 80s. There are reasons to believe that these are undercounts and earlier Largent had claimed that Oregon had sterilizations after 1965, but as far as I can tell, the widely reported 1981 date stems from a hospital striking the procedure from its books a couple years before the state changed its laws and has nothing to do with actual sterilizations.
Largent’s story doesn’t accord with testimony from those who were charged with destroying the records of the Oregon Eugenics Board, or the widespread nationwide practice of sterilizing Native American women in BIA hospitals for other procedures (which is barely touched on even in other scholarly treatments of the general phenomenon). The book might sound persuasive to you, but it’s not true.
According to Largent’s “Breeding Contempt” (following Robitscher), all sterilizations in the US in the 70s were in Virginia and none were in the 80s. There are reasons to believe that these are undercounts and earlier Largent had claimed that Oregon had sterilizations after 1965, but as far as I can tell, the widely reported 1981 date stems from a hospital striking the procedure from its books a couple years before the state changed its laws and has nothing to do with actual sterilizations.
Largent’s story doesn’t accord with testimony from those who were charged with destroying the records of the Oregon Eugenics Board, or the widespread nationwide practice of sterilizing Native American women in BIA hospitals for other procedures (which is barely touched on even in other scholarly treatments of the general phenomenon). The book might sound persuasive to you, but it’s not true.
Could you give a more specific citation about Oregon?
Very tricky due to internet sources aging, but here’s a snapshot of an article discussing that testimony.
http://web.archive.org/web/20021026095240/http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/news/1028030290179750.xml
I don’t see where that supports
(unless your disagreement with Douglas_Knight is about something else now)
What do you mean by “testimony”?
I don’t believe anyone was charged with destroying records.
The term “testimony” doesn’t only refer to legal proceedings.