9/16/20

By Josh Rubin

How do we think about the revelation that there are women in an ICE prison saying that they were subjected to surgeries that will prevent them from having children?

Some people have told me that I should be measured and cautious in my reaction to this. That an investigation has not happened. But doesn’t that ignore lessons we should have learned by now? Women have said these things. To the brave nurse who came forward and from whom we learned about this. Now, to lawyers who represent them. To volunteers who have heard them.

When the power is held by people whose interest is to silence those women, do we have the option to be cautious? Would an investigation happen if our reaction were measured and skeptical? In short, would we ever find out? And would these women ever be heard above the drone of the news cycle?

And then there are some that encourage me not to see in this an echo of our heritage of eugenics and forced sterilization. That is the “one greedy doctor” explanation. Let me address it this way.

Evil is always a conspiracy. It never takes place in a vacuum. Without a prison, there can be no prison doctor. Without racism, there can be no prison. Without greed there is no racism. Without tacit consent and silence from those who make the contracts and deliver the human bodies to the doctors, there can be no unwanted surgeries. Without the systemically created powerlessness of immigrant women, the withholding of human rights, a man, a system, could not mutilate women.

Mengele did not create Nazism. Nazism allowed Mengele his monstrous behavior. This prison, this episode of atrocity we are trying to understand, did not create racism. Racism allowed it to happen.

That is the parallel that I see.