Woman claims doctor secretly sterilized her

[bathroommonkey76]

RALEIGH, NC (WTVD) -- When Sarah Cotton had severe stomach pain and bleeding in 2007, her sister Brenda Womble took her to see a doctor.

What they saw in CT scan images stunned them.

"We were just flabbergasted," Womble recalled.

The X-Ray images showed Cotton had an IUD - an intrauterine device designed to prevent pregnancy - in her body. Until that moment, Cotton never knew it was there.

The sisters began tracing back through Cotton's medical history, and realized the device had been implanted some 40 years before without her permission.

"It was something forced on her without her consent and I equate that as a woman being raped. It's something against her wishes," offered Womble - a professor at NC Central University.

Read more here:

http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/abc11_investigates&id=8546202

[Quantess]

1. She had 3 kids.

[bathroommonkey76]

2. But the doc decided to insert the device without telling her after the 3rd pregnancy! nt

[southernyankeebelle]

6. Why are you surprised? It has happened before. I read I think last

year where a black woman was forced in a position not to have kids. She was sterilized without her knowledge.

[GobBluth]

3. I have had 2 IUD's placed. Can't imagine not knowing. Not doubting the story, just wondering

how that is possible. Also, she is saying it was placed after giving birth. I know this was 40 years ago, but I had to wait well after giving birth before I could get it.

Just strange. Though doctors probably weren't questioned much back then.

[LisaL]

4. In those 40 years, she never went to OB/GYN?

It is very strange.

[tammywammy]

10. Yes, I found that part strange too.

[Ilsa]

12. See my post #11 below. nt

[Ilsa]

11. Remember, the IUD is placed up in the Uterus.

There is supposed to be a string leading out through the cervix, but the doctor who did this could have cut off the strings or placed them up in the uterus. It would not be visualized during a routine visit to a gyn.

[tammywammy]

13. Ahh, I see.

I don't know much about IUDs. Thanks for the information.

I feel sorry for this woman.

[maximusveritas]

8. You can get it placed <48 hours after delivery or wait a few weeks

Just not in between. Also, informed consent was not a big thing back then, so maybe he just told them he was going to do it without fully explaining what it was.

[bathroommonkey76]

5. Unfortunately this type of "treatment" was commonplace in the 50s & 60s here in NC

N. Carolina to pay $50,000 to each victim of forced sterilization

Raleigh, NC, United States (AHN) – North Carolina will pay $50,000 to each person who was forcibly sterilized under the state’s eugenics program from 1929 to 1974. But one victim, 57-year-old Elaine Riddick, said Wednesday she is refusing the compensation for not being enough to erase her pain of not being able to bear more children.

The state’s Eugenics Compensation Task Force voted on Jan. 10 to pay the amount to each sterilization victim making North Carolina the first state to do so. A total 33 states conducted the eugenics program that sterilized some 65,000 young men and women deemed not fit to bear children for being feebleminded, disabled, a criminal, epileptic and alcoholic. The program ended in the 1980s.

In North Carolina, an estimated 7,200 people were sterilized on orders of the state’s eugenics board composed of the state health director, a lawyer from the attorney general’s office and three other officials. Less than 2,000 of them are believed to be still alive with 72 being identified.

http://gantdaily.com/2012/01/26/n-carolina-to-pay-50000-to-each-victim-of-forced-sterilization/

[LisaL]

7. IUD is birth control, not sterilization. Its reversible.

[adamuu]

9. if you know about it

otherwise, its no different

[BlueIris]

14. Sickening. nt