Book description
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…
Why read it?
1 author picked Surgery and Salvation as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Elizabeth O’Brien narrates the unexamined history of obstetrical surgery in Mexico, beginning with the late colonial history of the Catholic-directed emergence of a mandate to perform caesarean sections on dying or dead women to access and baptise fetuses before to ensure their eternal salvation. O’Brien then treats various groups, medical procedures, institutions, and events delineating the conflicted history of obstetrical care through the 1930s.
The episodes are fascinating and disturbing and include such instances as the 1901 riot of a group of women forcibly confined to Hospital Morelos for suspected venereal infection and a new medical procedure–“vaginal bifurcation”—a medical student…
From Nora's list on unearthing abortion’s hidden history.
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