My friend was on jury duty at this trial

During the time he was on jury duty he told me "you have to promise not to kill anybody when I tell you about this trial"

http://www.theolympian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060720/NEWS/60720003


Hysterectomy case tests protocol issues
Snip-----------------

"The imminent ruling also comes as officials for Providence Centralia say the staff is looking into whether their protocols for doing hysterectomies on young women should be changed. A state Department of Health study in March found that 103, or 14.3 percent, of 720 hysterectomies done at the Centralia facility from 1999 to 2004 were on women ages 30 and younger — one of the highest percentages in the state"
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"The state study shows the majority of young women receiving hysterectomies were those on state aid or who had illegitimate children, Deutscher said."

The outcome of the trial:

$1.57 million award stands in lawsuit over hysterectomy
http://www.theolympian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060729/NEWS/607290366


Anyway, my friend-- a black man, tried to get out of this trial, because he knew he was going to be angry. He told them "They used to do that to women in the south, I can't be impartial" (As an aside, my friend has been called up for jury duty 4 times in 6 years) They accepted him anyway. The newspaper articles can't give a depiction of the trial, which upset him as much as he thought it would.

From my friends memory, among other things, the defense tried to say that since the young woman's father was a firefighter and trained in emergency medical care, he should qualify as a second opinion. The women suffered damage not only because of the hysterectomy, but because the way it was performed. My friend said the doctor "forgot" such things as his surgical entry code. The defense did everything they could to show that the young woman was avaricious, and "just" after money.

I asked my friend if they offered a racial breakdown of the hysterectomies, (There wasn't) because there is a significant hispanic population around the area, he said "I was afraid to go there"

He did his best but was appalled. The shear numbers of hysterectomies on young women made him sick. The methods of the defense made him sick. The lack of compassion for the young woman in question made him sick.

The doctor is an orthopedist, and evidently there was some questioning as to the legitimacy of his licensing for the procedure. He is a MD at the Women's center at the hospital.

My friend said another jurist believed everything the defense said, hands down without question and no understanding of what a hysterectomy, much less one with complications means to a woman. The evidence was overwhelming enough to change that jurists mind. I'll have to ask my friend what the "misconduct" was that the young woman's attorney got nailed for.


The whole thing is very scary.

My memories are vague on this, because I read it so long ago, but I recall a quotation about the heyday of eugenics: "In reform schools for girls, sterilization was meted out as freely as a slap on the wrist would have been at a fancy finishing school."

That was the era when people believed that "criminal tendencies" were inherited.

You might want to check out Barren in the Promised Land, a history of infertility in the United States. It includes a couple chapters on involuntary sterilization programs.

all seem to converge on this one.

It is telling that involuntary/coerced castration (or even just vassectomies) are rare or unheard of. Those would be easier proceedures for these evil bastards to use. Not only are they brutally evil, but they're willing to go to a hell of a lot of trouble to specifically target the women instead of the men.

It's a shame that the racial aspect of this did not come up in the trail. The very thought that this might not be racially motivated in part is ludicrous given the history of forced sterilizations.

I'm disgusted that this isn't on the front page of newspapers all across the country. :grr:

Centralia is a medium sized town--mostly white. Here is the racial breakdown of the city itself
Races in Centralia:

White Non-Hispanic (85.3%)
Hispanic (10.2%)
Other race (4.9%)
Two or more races (2.4%)
American Indian (2.2%)
(Total can be greater than 100% because Hispanics could be counted in other races)
http://www.city-data.com/city/Centralia-Washington.html

So you can see why I was concerned. On the other hand, there are a lot of poor white people in Lewis county--The unemployment rate is 8.3% and the medium household income is $35,000. The cost of living is lower though.
This case is more disturbing because of some of the things my friend described in the trial--His memory (memory being what it is) of the actual numbers of hysterectomies of women under 30 was higher than what the newspaper reported for instance.


I should do some general statistical search on hysterectomies around the country. Every once in a while you hear about "unnecessary" hysterectomies, but it's mostly below the radar. I'm almost afraid to do it, but I think I will.

This is one of those bedrock issues we really need to be aware of. It is such an extreme violation of civil rights that I don't think we can afford to look away.

isn't allowing vets to do unwanted hysterectomies on poor women. Trust, me, that will be next, eugenics on the cheap. After all, poor people are just animals, right?

It's the same hideous sense of entitlement the rich have always had regarding the poor. It's coming back now because the rich are SO rich. Add to that medicine's inherent bias against women, and it's a recipe for real tragedy like this case.

Any change in this country has got to come in the form of progressive taxation. It's the only hope we have. Any country that allows wealth to concentrate to this extent will slide into stagnation and then degenerate into feudalism.

The rich really think they want that. My guess is that they won't enjoy it much, either.

So... those women who want surgical sterilization and can afford to pay for it get the run around, referred to shrinks and told that they "might change your mind" when they take their fertility into their own hands.

Women who would prefer not to have periods and use birth control pills or menstrual extraction to achieve that end are called unnatural and selfish. When we complain that periods are not fun and a good contraceptive would have not required a monthly bleed, we're told to shut up and take it.

But...

If you're poor, the wrong color, or the wrong class, hysterectomies are forced upon you?

I give up. I'm not crazy. The world is crazy.

Most of western Washington state is reasonably to very liberal, with a couple of notable exceptions. Eastern Washington tends to be VERY conservative. The divide is so marked that it's referred to as the Cascade Curtain. The exceptions on the west side are primarily up around Bellingham and in Lewis County, where Centralia is. Lewis County, for reasons I totally do NOT understand, is redder than rural Alabama. It's an isolated island of red in western Washington's indigo sea. I guess all the wingnuts that couldn't handle eastern Washington's horrible climate are in Lewis County.

going on in the 21st century, or the fact that so few know about it and even fewer seem to care. :banghead: