1. Be it enacted by the general assembly of Virginia, That whenever the superintendent of the Western State Hospital, or of the Eastern State Hospital, or of the Southwestern State Hospital, or of the Central State Hospital, or the State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded, shall be of opinion that it is for the best interests of the patients and of society that any inmate of the institution under his care should be sexually sterilized, such superintendent is hereby authorized to perform, or cause to be performed by some capable physicians or surgeon, the operation of sterilization on any such patient confined in such institution afflicted with hereditary forms of insanity that are recurrent, idiocy, imbecility, feeble-mindedness or epilepsy; provided that such superintendent shall have first complied with the requirements of this act.
Text from 1924 law
It was a snowy day in the mountains and I had a late shift in the ER so we would have plenty of broken bones and twist from tripping on the ice and snow. Lots of people in pain waiting for the one doctor on duty in the small ER they had in this small rural town. We got lots of interesting and wild cases because the area was so poor and underdeveloped. The people were a hearty bunch who worked hard and tried to fix most of their own problems sometimes we had to fix those fixes. They were kind when you did help and it felt good to help them unlike the thanks you got in a city hospital. It was a February day and it was snowing hard but the main roads had been cleared. I made it into work expecting a lot of people in the waiting room and I was not disappointed. Lots of bruises and some patients holding bandages to deep cuts from falls most likely. I got ready to clean a lot of wounds and help with stitches. Maybe a cast or two. It was always like this during a snowstorm normally there were very few patients waiting because people would give themselves their own stitches and sometimes we would clean up infections caused by these homemade doctoring.
An ambulance pulled into our small little clinic which was not something that happened a lot, maybe it was a heart attack because of snow shoveling. Most people brought themselves in and one time a person who had a heart attack that drove themselves to our clinic. We were the closest doctor for the next 100 miles so there was best hope. We had an overnight doctor because of this.
They pulled a woman out of the ambulance and I could see blood and bone sticking out her leg. She must have had a large fall. I asked the Paramedics what was the story. They said she fell down a steep embankment and crawled out of it to get help. She had crawled half a mile before she found help and they called us because they didn’t want to make her break any worse. She is very calm and hasn’t cried out in pain. They wheeled her into the Exam Room 1 there was no question who got to be treated next. I got in there and cleaned out the wounds on her hands and asked where it hurt. I said the doctor would be in one minute. We would get you patched up soon and some pain medication. This woman whose name is Susan was calm and didn’t seem to show any expression of pain despite the extent of her injuries. These people had been hardened by the extreme environment and poverty. I don’t think I could be as tough but i grew up in the city. After the doctor had examined her and called in the night doctor to help with treating the compound fracture. I took to filling in her medical history on her chart because she would have to come back multiple times to get everything taken care of. I asked if she really crawled up an embankment and down the road for half a mile. She said yes. I am going to finish cleaning your cuts and take a medical history and call her family. She said she only had a bother but he could come get her. I cleaned up the cuts. She did not even flinch once when I used the antiseptic to clean the minor wounds on her body. I took a basic medical history and I got to the question if she had ever had a child. This caused tears to pour out of her. She said she had never had children. She was unable to have children because the state had sterilized her. It broke my heart that a woman that was so strong to crawl out of a ditch with a broken bone stuck out of her leg and had not cried until I had asked her a question about a baby.
Susan started to talk about how when she was child she was from a very poor family who lived in a shack and her mother was a widow because her father died in the mines when it collapsed on him. Her mother got 20 dollars from the mining company. She grew up in the rural area and everyone looked down on them because her mom had to do what it took to survive and feed her family. There isn’t much work for women so she washed clothes and did sewing for all the single men. This made the others think she was a whore because sometimes the men would give her gifts but she was a good woman and never ever did anything wrong . I had epilepsy so I had to go to the state hospital when I was 15 for treatments. The doctors told me I would be better after this treatment. The doctors seemed real nice at first in their white coats. They were the cleanest clothes I had ever seen. They seemed to be really interested in me and used words I did not understand around me. They said they had to do an operation to make me better. They gave her something to make her sleep. I woke up with pain on my insides and bandaged and they told her she wouldn’t have to worry about getting pregnant and laughed. That laugh haunts she told me and her life was never the same after that day. She said that I wanted to have a family. Tears poured down and she could not talk anymore.
It made my heart break and I wished I had not asked the question. I wondered if the damage done to the world could ever be known because these sterilized women had their choices taken away from them. The loss would be unmeasurable and the damage done incomprehensible. This made me think of the flower growing out a stone alone and sad but strong as anyone I had seen come to the ER. I wish I could have made her feel better but I know I can’t say or do anything to stop the pain in her heart from the choices taken away from her by a state that would never know how strong and beautiful she was to become but her heart would always have a wound. We could never treat that wound and I looked into her face and I could not say anything that would mean anything. It was like a bottomless well of sadness you could never escape no matter how much you tried to climb out of. I would leave this shift and go home and have a restless night sleep but would I ever really feel the same after seeing the trauma of a injury on the heart much worse wound than you could ever get from injuries received from the worst accident even death because this was no accident because of people who never saw these people as humans but treated them like animals. They were the animals who had done this. I dreamed restlessly that night of a flower growing out of a stone.
Amelio's Palace of Stories 