Bend the Arc: Jewish Action

In the 1930s, Hitler and the Nazis were directly inspired by Jim Crow laws in the United States. They sent researchers to study how the U.S. subjugated Black people and inform how they dehumanized Jews, Roma, and other communities.https://www.democracynow.org/2020/8/12/caste_isabel_wilkerson …

In the 1927 case Buck v. Bell, the Supreme Court upheld a Virginia statute that enabled the state to sterilize people with mental illness. This decision resulted in 70,000 sterilizations of people deemed "unfit" to reproduce.https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/03/07/469478098/the-supreme-court-ruling-that-led-to-70-000-forced-sterilizations …

In the 1970s, the U.S. government forcibly sterilized as many as 70,000 Native women through the Indian Health Service — a trauma deeply impacting Indigenous health. "An estimated 25 percent of Native women of childbearing age were sterilized by 1976."https://www.ladyscience.com/features/forced-sterilization-native-american-women-face-rejection-retraumatization-in-healthcare …

Forced sterilization policies directly targeted communities of color and people with disabilities, including Puerto Rican women, Latinas in California prisons, Black women, Native women, and so many more. Each instance was violent and genocidal.https://theconversation.com/forced-sterilization-policies-in-the-us-targeted-minorities-and-those-with-disabilities-and-lasted-into-the-21st-century-143144 …

The film No Más Bebés tells the story of how Mexican and Mexican-American women in Los Angeles were coerced into involuntary sterilizations. One woman recalls thinking “[They] must’ve thought, ‘This one has so many kids, we’ll just sew her up.’’https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/no-m-s-beb-s-looks-back-l-mexican-moms-n505256 …

These shameful practices continued in the 2010s. "Doctors under contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sterilized nearly 150 female inmates from 2006 to 2010." Incarcerated folks' reproductive rights are under attack.https://www.revealnews.org/article/female-inmates-sterilized-in-california-prisons-without-approval/ …

In 1973, two Black sisters, Minnie and Marie Relf, were secretly sterilized at a federally-funded agency under the premise of getting birth control shots. Their lawsuit drew national attention to how poor Black women were being targeted by sterilization.https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/jun/27 …

Between the 1930s and the 1970s, nearly one-third of women in Puerto Rico were sterilized as part of a mass eugenics campaign. This history continues to effect Puerto Rican women and their communities to this day.https://www.panoramas.pitt.edu/health-and-society/dark-history-forced-sterilization-latina-women …