Slide 18
Slide 18 text
Photo: Hey Paul Studios, “Uterus Art,”
https://www.flickr.com/photos/hey__paul/5870794493/ CC-BY
Photo: Nate Grigg, “Not 100% Effective,”
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nateone/2713580189/ CC-BY
But look, where I am as an individual in all this… I’m not of Puerto Rican ancestry myself, as far as I know. (Do I trust 23 and Me?
Ahahahahaha no.) So besides having worked on that grant project, here’s the connection. Well, several connections.
*CLICK* First, I have in the course of my life relied on Planned Parenthood, which Margaret Sanger founded, for reproductive health care.
*CLICK* Second, I spent a few years taking birth control pills to control my fertility. And when the pill gave me high blood pressure, that was a
known side effect and my doctors knew how to deal with it. *CLICK* Third, when I decided I absolutely did not want to bear children, I had
what in Puerto Rico they still call “la operación” myself—I had a tubal ligation, which went fine and has done its job.
So I benefited directly from the unconscionable things Sanger and Gamble did in Puerto Rico. I am complicit. What’s more, the biomedical
research enterprise along with money from creepy rich people MADE ME COMPLICIT in systematic dehumanization of, and direct harm to,
Puerto Rican women. And I am HORRIFIED by that.
I can’t just un-know this, somehow remove it from my memory; I sure hope now YOU can’t either. It is part of our collective memory now, as it
should be. So how do I trust the industry that made me complicit in this? How does anybody trust you? Why should we?