r/socialjustice

In the 19th century, white clinical scientists and medical researchers utilized the legal vulnerability of slavery and used black women’s bodies as medical testing grounds. They frequently operated under the false, racist stereotypes that Black people had a higher tolerance for physical pain.

Dr J marion sims was celebrated as the “father of modern gynecology” Whose advancements were achieved through horrific experiments on enslaved women. At the time he was attempting to cure vesicovaginal fistula (a severe childbirth complication), as he viewed women's medical conditions as a threat to their economic value as agricultural laborers and childbearers. So he leased enslaved black women from plantation owners.

History records that these women were put under extraordinary conditions. Like, withheld of anesthesia, as sims claimed the surgeries “were not painful enough”. As the surgeries grew increasingly gruesome, Sims’s white male medical assistants refused to help him hold the women down, so Sims subsequently forced the enslaved women to act as his surgical assistants, requiring them to restrain one another during operations. And because they were legally classified as property, these women could not offer or withhold consent. Consent was granted solely by their owners.

So yeah ladies and gentlemen, modern gynecology was built on the systemic and non consensual exploitation of enslaved black women in the 19th centuqry.