Surgery and Salvation: The Roots of Reproductive Injustice in Mexico, 1770-1940

Elizabeth Aislinn O'Brien

ISBN 10: 1469675870 / ISBN 13: 9781469675879

Published by The University of North Carolina Press, 2023

About this Item

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Seller Inventory # B9781469675879

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Surgery and Salvation: The Roots of Reproductive Injustice in Mexico, 1770-1940
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Publication Date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1469675870
• ISBN 13: 9781469675879
• Binding: Paperback / softback
• Condition: New
• Weight: 272 grams

About this title

Synopsis

In this sweeping history of reproductive surgery in Mexico, Elizabeth O'Brien traces the interstices of religion, reproduction, and obstetric racism from the end of the Spanish empire through the post-revolutionary 1930s. Examining medical ideas about operations (including cesarean section, abortion, hysterectomy, and eugenic sterilization), Catholic theology, and notions of modernity and identity, O'Brien argues that present-day claims about fetal personhood are rooted in the use of surgical force against marginalized and racialized women. This history illuminates the theological, patriarchal, and epistemological roots of obstetric violence and racism today.

O'Brien illustrates how ideas about maternal worth and unborn life developed in tandem. Eighteenth-century priests sought to save unborn souls through cesarean section, while nineteenth-century doctors aimed to salvage some unmarried women’s social reputations via therapeutic abortion. By the twentieth century, eugenicists wished to regenerate the nation’s racial profile, in part by sterilizing women in public clinics. The belief that medical interventions could redeem women, children, and the nation is what O’Brien refers to as “salvation though surgery.” As operations acquired racial and religious significances, Indigenous, Afro-Mexican, and mixed-race people’s bodies became sites for surgical experimentation. Even during periods of Church-state conflict, O'Brien argues, the religious valences of experimental surgery manifested in embodied expressions of racialized, and often-coercive, medical science.

About the Author

Elizabeth O’Brien is assistant professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles.