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Why individual medical liberty isn't an isolated case
Niran Al-Agba
Columnist
June 25, 2021
Deep in Ocilla, Georgia, sits the Irwin County Detention Center, a facility contracted with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to house female immigrants. Last fall, Dawn Wooten, a nurse and whistleblower working there, accused gynecologist Dr. Mahendra Amin of performing unnecessary surgeries on women — including the involuntary removal of the uterus, ovaries and fallopian tubes — without their consent. Wooten calls Amin the “uterus collector.” Women report going to see the doctor for simple conditions related to diabetes or injured ribs and end up having gynecological operations. In all, 19 women have come forward alleging they were coerced to undergo “medically unnecessary” surgical procedures which may affect their ability to bear children. Amin denied the allegations, yet independent medical experts from Northwestern, Baylor and Creighton medical schools found clear evidence of medical abuse.
America has a long history of committing egregious reproductive injustices on subsets of people deemed less worthy. It may seem that my previous column, about a vaccination mandate law upheld by the Supreme Court in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, has little to do with reproductive freedom. Unfortunately, the precedent set by Jacobson paved the way to take control of a woman’s right to choose in 1927. In this column, I’ll discuss the impact of that reprehensible decision, how women from marginalized groups do not have reproductive freedom today, and how rolling back abortion rights in Mississippi could become a slippery slope to the loss of much more...