Matters of Choice: Puerto Rican Women's Struggle for Reproductive Freedom

Notes

163 Notes introduction 1. Tubal ligation is the medical procedure that terminates women’s reproductive capacity. It consists of cutting and suturing the fallopian tubes in order to permanently block the flow of sperm to the egg cell and to prevent the egg from entering the uterus. A hysterectomy is a form of sterilization generally implemented for medical reasons rather than birth control. There are two types of hysterectomies, partial and full. A partial hysterectomy is when the fallopian tubes are removed. A full hysterectomy is when a woman’s fallopian tubes and uterus are removed. 2. Nancy had remarried by the year 2006; however, her household income could still be considered below or close to below the poverty level. For example, in the year 2006, the U.S. governement determined that the official poverty line was $20, 444 for a family of two adults and two children. In 2008, New York Mayor Bloomberg tried to redefine the poverty level for the same family as $26,138 (Rauh 2008). 3. In many cases, a developing country in need of aid agrees to lower its rate of population growth in order to receive funds or to be forgiven a loan. The sad reality is that in many Third World countries sterilization continues to be used as population control because those governments do not offer women and men viable birth control alternatives (Hartmann 1995). 4. As a graduate student I reformulated the oppositional framework. However, I am now aware that many other social scientists have critiqued this model. My study is an example of why the binary model does not work. 5. To ensure confidentiality, all of the interviewees’ names have been changed. chapter 1 — The Birth Control Movement in Puerto Rico 1. In 1933 Germany passed laws that led to the sterilization of 200,000 Jews and others in Nazi concentration camps. Hitler modeled the laws on those developed by the U.S. Eugenics Record Office (Gaag 1998). 2. Yet, oddly enough there are more statistics available on tubal ligation in Puerto Rico than in the continental United States. 164 notes to pages 8 –31 3. The rate of natural increase is a calculation that shows the population growth based on the number of births and deaths without taking into account immigration and migration. 4. The rate of sterilization among Puerto Rican women declined in the late twentieth century. See Colón et al. 1999, 63. 5. Schoen argues that even though this eugenic law was passed in Puerto Rico, the majority of the sterilizations that took place were elective. According to her work, she only found ninety-seven sterilization operations were undertaken in Puerto Rico for eugenic reasons (Schoen 2005, 213, 206). 6. The pharmaceutical industry played a powerful role in the history of Puerto Rico’s birth control movement. For example, according to Briggs the pharmaceuticals in Puerto Rico were so influential that when Rockefeller refused to fund birth control research in Puerto Rico the pharmaceuticals did (Briggs 2002, 124). 7.See Alice Colón-Warren et al. (1999) for an excellent analysis of the history of abortion in Puerto Rico. See also Azize-Vargas and Avilés (1997). chapter 2 — Gender Awareness Across Generations 1.Prior to the industrialization of Puerto Rico, life was harsh. In the 1940s, the average life expectancy was 46.0 years as compared to 63.6 for residents of the U.S. mainland (CRS Report 2006, 3; Puerto Rico Health n.d.). In general, the poor were malnourished and suffered from poor health. The most common illnesses in Puerto Rico prior to 1940 were anemia, tuberculosis, hookworm, and typhoid fever. One of the primary reasons the second generation women accepted sterilization was because of their poverty and the high rate of maternal mortality. Because poor women were malnourished and suffered from chronic anemia and other debilitating health problems, frequent consecutive pregnancies made them more vulnerable to certain health conditions. 2. The Catholic Church and the Independentistas adamantly opposed birth control and frequently forced these clinics to close down. In addition, in the early 1940s corporate millionaire Clarence Gamble temporarily monopolized the birth control market in order to promote his own methods. As historian Briggs (2002) notes, this gap in the birth control market led a significant number of Puerto Rican women to accept sterilization because it was the only effective method available on the market at this time. 3. Doña Rosario’s example shows how embedded la operación had become in...