Surgery and salvation : the roots of reproductive injustice in Mexico, 1770-1940 / Elizabeth O'Brien.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

O'Brien, Elizabeth, 1987- author.

Series:

Studies in Social Medicine Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Obstetrics--Surgery--Mexico--History.

Obstetrics.

Obstetrics--Surgery--Social aspects--Mexico.

Women's health services--Mexico--Religious aspects.

Women's health services.

Racism in medicine--Mexico.

Racism in medicine.

Human experimentation in medicine--Mexico--History.

Human experimentation in medicine.

Involuntary treatment--Mexico--History.

Involuntary treatment.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (336 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

The University of North Carolina Press

Summary:

In this sweeping history of reproductive surgery in Mexico, Elizabeth O'Brien traces the interstices of religion, reproduction, and obstetric racism from the end of the Spanish empire through the post-revolutionary 1930s. Examining medical ideas about operations (including cesarean section, abortion, hysterectomy, and eugenic sterilization), Catholic theology, and notions of modernity and identity, O'Brien argues that present-day claims about fetal personhood are rooted in the use of surgical force against marginalized and racialized women. This history illuminates the theological, patriarchal, and epistemological roots of obstetric violence and racism today.O'Brien illustrates how ideas about maternal worth and unborn life developed in tandem. Eighteenth-century priests sought to save unborn souls through cesarean section, while nineteenth-century doctors aimed to salvage some unmarried women's social reputations via therapeutic abortion. By the twentieth century, eugenicists wished to regenerate the nation's racial profile, in part by sterilizing women in public clinics. The belief that medical interventions could redeem women, children, and the nation is what O'Brien refers to as "salvation though surgery." As operations acquired racial and religious significances, Indigenous, Afro-Mexican, and mixed-race people's bodies became sites for surgical experimentation. Even during periods of Church-state conflict, O'Brien argues, the religious valences of experimental surgery manifested in embodied expressions of racialized, and often-coercive, medical science.

Contents:

The young woman of Devil's Alley

As small as a grain of barley: the Catholic enlightenment and the cesarean operation, 1745-1835

Ramón Neonato: colonialism and the cesarean section in new Spain

The moral perfection of the individual and the species: ovariotomy and the medicalization of hysteria, 1840s-1870s

The salvation that only medicine can provide: therapeutic abortion and artificial premature birth, 1850s-1870s

A uterus in our hands: obstetric racism, 1869-1910s

Free to walk wherever she damn well pleased: obstetric violence in policy and practice, 1870s-1910s

A true professional sacrament: tubal ligation and eugenic sterilization, 1920s-1930s

Temporary sterilization could be our daily bread: vaginal bifurcation, 1930s

No one was decent to me there: complaints and demands for healthcare, 1920s-1930s

Patriarchy is a judge, and we are judged for being born: resistance against reproductive injustice in Mexico and Latin America.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

1-4696-7589-7

979-88-908638-0-5

1-4696-7971-X

1-4696-7588-9

OCLC:

1376156528