Reading about Rita Joe's experience reminded me that when I worked as an aide in a small Catholic hospital 50 years ago many of the major surgeries were hysterectomies. Were at least some of them stealth sterilizations? Did the mother superior, the Catholic patients, their doctors and perhaps the priest view hysterectomy
as an acceptable form of birth control?
Or, rather, as a medical necessity that had infertility as a
side effect? I believe my mother had her
hysterectomy because of uncontrollable bleeding although I imagine she was
relieved after four children and at midlife to put any childbearing potential behind her.
Recently a friend my age mentioned that her mother had a
hysterectomy because after eight children she didn’t think she had the health
or stamina for another. She had hesitated to have the operation—which her doctor was willing to
perform—because birth control was the purpose of it not a side effect. “Are you
crazy?” her sister asked in a "Rita Joe" kind of a moment. "Think of the children you already have."
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