Take My Hand

by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

“Look, a woman ought to have the right to end a pregnancy if she wants to. The issue in our case has to do with whether the women wanted to.”

“Well, women—many of them Medicaid patients—were asked to consent to sterilization during childbirth,

especially women who already had three or more children.”

Most of the women reported that they had never discussed sterilization with the doctor prior to the delivery room.

There was no information provided on the form about the benefits, risks, or alternatives to sterilization.”

“Dr. Rosenstein, did you find that the women were legally capable of consent?” “Yes, they were legally capable in most instances.” “But they were given limited information?” “Yes, sir. We even found that many believed the procedure was entirely reversible, despite the form’s language.”

“Mr. Feldman, we have found that sterilization is the rule, not the exception. It is widely endemic in this country.

It is a form of reproductive control.”

“Our findings show that HEW’s numbers are grossly underestimated. Our research reveals that over the past few years, nearly one hundred fifty

All of this had happened under the government’s watch.

now everything melted together in my head and all the numbers merged into one outraged thought: How dare they? Our bodies belonged to us. Poor, disabled, it didn’t matter. These were our bodies, and we had the right to decide what to do with

them. It was as if they were just taking our bodies from us, as if we didn’t even belong to ourselves.

Whether it was the Birmingham church bombing or Ruby Bridges, there wasn’t any justice for little Black girls, and never had been.

Good intentions, we now knew, did not excuse the wounding. Working in the name of the good did not negate the hurt. As long as these injustices continued, all of us were culpable.

“Ladies and gentlemen, two little girls received justice in Montgomery, Alabama, today. And so did poor women all over this country.”

At one time, I might have judged her theft. Poverty did not warrant disobedience to God, our pastor had warned on more than one occasion. But I was glad she had done what she had to survive.

I had to do everything in my power to resist just giving her my record player. She would have enjoyed it more than I did. But I couldn’t do that any longer. I could not try to buy their salvation.

Even as a single mother, the system favors me because of my status as a doctor. For Erica and India, the adoption process would have been more difficult. The judge scrutinizes you more closely if you’re poor. Disabled. Unmarried. I am still just as aware as ever that there is work to be done in this world.

I needed to talk to her, to tell her I understood how a person could get so caught up in doing good that they forgot that the people they served had lives of their own.

Patients wanted to know that you remembered them. They responded better when you asked, “Are you still experiencing those chest pains?”

The abortion rate for Black women is nearly five times that for white women. African American women are three to four times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. Furthermore, health conditions that disproportionately affect Black women, such as uterine fibroids, receive very little government research funding.