An examination of hysterectomy and the struggle for bodily and reproductive autonomy At least one hysterectomy is performed every minute of the year, making it the most common gynecological surgery worldwide. By the age of sixty-five, one out of five people born with a uterus will have it removed. So, why do we seldom talk about this surgery? Highly performed yet overlooked, examining the paradox of hysterectomy begins to unravel the various problems with how we medically treat uteruses and the people who have them. Get It Out weaves centuries of medical history with rich qualitative data from 100 women, trans men, and nonbinary people who had, want, or are considering hysterectomy. In compelling detail, Andrea Becker reveals how America's healthcare system routinely deprives people of the ability to control their own bodies along race and gender lines. When people ask for a hysterectomy, they are often met with pushback: Are you sick enough? Old enough? Have you had enough babies? Will you regret this? How will your future husband feel about this? Yet this pushback is not equally experienced. While some people are barred access, others are ushered toward a hysterectomy. These contradictory recommendations reveal the persistent biases entrenched within healthcare. Get It Out interrogates how little choice people with uteruses ultimately have over their reproductive health, and explores what these "choices" signify amid interlocking systems of inequality.
Andrea Becker is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Hunter College-CUNY. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, and Slate.
Based on the silence around hysterectomy in our culture, you'd never guess that many millions of human beings around the world say goodbye to their uteruses every year. Where incarcerated, immigrant, Black and Indigenous gestational laborers are concerned, the removal of a uterus typically occurs with the ready help of U.S. surgeons, even as others - notably, white women and trans men - have to fight to get help in discarding the equipment of "biological motherhood." Why do our societies work so hard to keep this particular organ in some bodies while seeking to remove it from others, even as it causes myriad health problems and inconveniences those of us who have no use for it, to no end? Andrea Becker's Get It Out engages a completely ordinary yet conspicuously neglected practice of everyday healthcare, and demands that an overdue womb-reckoning take place. * Sophie Lewis, author of Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family * An inclusive, compassionate, and clear-eyed investigation. Like hysterectomy itself, Get it Out speaks to the heart of who we are and how we inhabit our bodies. * Leah Hazard, author of Womb: The Inside Story of Where We All Began *
