How Should a Physician Respond to Discovering Her Patient Has Been Forcibly Sterilized?

Abstract

Forced sterilization has a long history in the United States. Because sterilization requires surgical skill, physicians have been the lone professionals engaging in this practice, although they were not the only experts or Americans to hold eugenic and neo-eugenic views. But physicians have also been whistleblowers who exposed sterilization abuse and led efforts to end it. The commentary on this case suggests that physicians should respond along those lines.