Johanna Schoen Reads from
Choice and Coercion

On April 5, 2005, at 3:30, Johanna Schoen will read from Choice and Coercion: Birth Control, Sterilization, and Abortion in Public Health and Welfare (UNC Press, 2005), at the Bull’s Head Bookstore.

In August of 2003, North Carolina became the first state in the nation to offer restitution to victims of state-ordered sterilizations carried out by its eugenic sterilization program between 1929 and 1975. The decision was prompted by a series in the Winston-Salem Journal based on her research of the papers of the North Carolina Eugenics Board and the summaries of 7,500 case histories.

“As is the case when any great wrong is done,” Schoen writes, “it is difficult to imagine any action that might redress the pain that eugenic sterilization programs have caused. We might begin, though, by reconsidering the significance we attribute to official apologies. Such apologies are certainly necessary, but they are only one component of a serious response. Instead, they must be accompanied by sincere attempts to encourage study, to understand the history of state sterilization programs, and to apply the lessons of this history to present-day social policy. As poor women’s ability to exercise their reproductive rights remains under constant attack, it behooves us to remember the legacy of state sterilization programs. This book is one effort to remember this legacy – and its complicated interaction with abortion and birth control.”

Johanna Schoen is an Assistant Professor of History and Women’s Studies at the University of Iowa. She received her PhD in history from UNC in 1996.