VL reported here last week about Louisiana State Representative John LaBruzzo’s efforts to create legislation that would pay poor women $1000 to have their tubes tide. At the time, a commenter noticed that many women of color and poor women may actually want the sterilization, to which I replied that it is frustrating that “help” for poor people always comes in the form of sterilization rather than challenges to economic structures (such as $1000 scholarships for school, more jobs, raising the minimum wage, etc).

Women’s Health & Justice Initiative and the New Orleans Women’s Health Clinic (both located in Louisiana) put out talking points to address LaBruzzo’s plans. The address the issue of “consent” in a very important way:

According to LaBruzzo, the solution to ending poverty in our society is to control and regulate the fertility and sexuality of black women – not the creation of comprehensive programs to improve health care access, our education system, housing affordability, and employment opportunities in the state. His plan pathologizes the reproductive capabilities of Black and poor women by proposing legislation to exploit the economic vulnerability of those who are socially stereotyped as burdens on the state.

Even if sterilization is voluntary, POVERTY IS NOT! Poverty, economic insecurity, and lack of sustainable livelihood can cause a woman to consider this aggressive sterilization incentive a viable option.

LaBruzzo talks about poverty as though it were an infectious disease—a though poor people will eventually make everyone poor—rather than a condition people are condemned to by Louisiana’s lack of investment in education, employment, affordable housing, and quality health care programs, services, and resources.

LaBruzzo uses a myth of scarcity to argue that if economic resources are shared with everyone, no one will have enough. The reality is that if the lion’s share of our economic resources stopped being used for unnecessary military spending and corporate welfare, such as the Wall Street bailout, then all our communities would have access to the resources and opportunities they need to survive and thrive!

…

The low-income women of color LaBruzzo feels so comfortable scapegoating for Louisiana’s economic conditions are those who support Louisiana’s economy by doing its low-wage work. When LaBruzzo goes to his office, these women clean it; when he goes to a restaurant, they wash the dishes; and when he stays at a hotel, they turn down his sheets. Rather than this mean-spirited attack, he should call for an increase in the minimum wage that would make it feasible for poor women to survive economically.

BFP (who is posting at Elle PhD these days) has the entire document.

Will there ever come a day when corporations are required to take responsibility for the state of economic mess that we are in rather than poor people? Will we ever stop believing that poor women and women of color *deserve* to be sterilized–that it’s there own fault for ‘being poor’?