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Full-Text Articles in Law and Race
Medical Violence, Obstetric Racism, And The Limits Of Informed Consent For Black Women, Colleen Campbell
Medical Violence, Obstetric Racism, And The Limits Of Informed Consent For Black Women, Colleen Campbell
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
This Essay critically examines how medicine actively engages in the reproductive subordination of Black women. In obstetrics, particularly, Black women must contend with both gender and race subordination. Early American gynecology treated Black women as expendable clinical material for its institutional needs. This medical violence was animated by biological racism and the legal and economic exigencies of the antebellum era. Medical racism continues to animate Black women’s navigation of and their dehumanization within obstetrics. Today, the racial disparities in cesarean sections illustrate that Black women are simultaneously overmedicalized and medically neglected—an extension of historical medical practices rooted in the logic …
The Charleston Policy: Substance Or Abuse?, Kimani Paul-Emile
The Charleston Policy: Substance Or Abuse?, Kimani Paul-Emile
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
In 1989, the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) adopted a policy that, according to subjective criteria, singled out for drug testing, certain women who sought prenatal care and childbirth services would be tested for prohibited substances. Women who tested positive were arrested, incarcerated and prosecuted for crimes ranging from misdemeanor substance possession to felony substance distribution to a minor. In this Article, the Author argues that by intentionally targeting indigent Black women for prosecution, the MUSC Policy continued the United States legacy of their systematic oppression and resulted in the criminalizing of Black Motherhood.