4:26am October 22, 2013

“When I was four years old, a doctor advised my parents that I should undergo a “routine” hysterectomy. It was recommended, the doctor said, to prevent the future inconvenience of menstruation. My parents, thankfully, were horrified and high-tailed it out of there, taking me and my four year old uterus with them.”

—

Stella Young, “The involuntary sterilisation of children with disabilities should be challenged”

All forced sterilization - of children, adults, people with disabilities, people in prison, Native women, Mexican American women, black women and men, Puerto Rican women, trans* people, De af people, Latinas in California, women who are poor and/or on welfare, people at the intersections of these categories - should be ended.

Why is that so controversial?

(via disabilityhistory)

Also examining sexual history is often totally disregarded with many disabled patients, for reasons I don’t know—is it because physicians are embarrassed to ask? is it because they don’t view disabled patients as full human beings and therefore assumes they don’t have sexual desires and acts? There’s that whole very controversial movement where parents of disabled children suppress their puberty because they feel that it would be too difficult to raise disabled adolescents.

(via baseln)

And then there’s the problem of parents and caregivers deciding we’re asexual/incompetent to have sex/any sex we have is coercive on someone’s part (possibly ours). So we learn to be ashamed of our sexuality and feel slut shamed for want of a more accurate term into not having sex or even a relationship because well, only evil people could ever possibly want us. Add to that any internalized notions we have about it being pretty much dangerous or bad for us to have kids… I’m sure that had I gotten pregnant as a teen I’d have been made to abort the child. Yeah… no. We need to be proud and free. And not forced into beliefs that hurt us for I guess the convenience of others.

(via thegreenanole)

Notes: