Yeehaw, Meteor readers,

I assume we have all seen Beyoncé’s cover art for her next album, “Cowboy Carter,” which drops on March 29. As a country music lover myself, I can’t wait. In the meantime, may I entertain you with a song from Tanner Adell, another country artist whose music really spins my spurs?

In today’s newsletter, we introduce you to disability rights activist and Ford Foundation officer Rebecca Cokley, who is shedding light on the forced sterilization of disabled people—a practice that’s still legal in many states. Plus, the death of a gaming icon, Joe Biden cancels more student loan debt (not mine 😞), and a weekend reading list.

Your wannabe buckle bunny,

Shannon Melero

WHAT’S GOING ON

• You may not know the name Lisa Lane, but if you’re among the millions of people who watched the Netflix series Queen’s Gambit, you saw a glimpse of her reality. While Lane was not the direct inspiration for Beth Harmon, the show’s protagonist (played by Anya Taylor-Joy), their lives were incredibly similar: Lane was an ambitious, short-tempered 1950s chess champion turned media darling and equal pay advocate. When she retired from the limelight, she became an environmentalist and a small business owner. Lane died of cancer just last month at 90, and despite the popularity of Queen’s Gambit, no one thought to write a thorough retelling of her extraordinary, trailblazing life—until just yesterday, when Slate gave the chess icon her due.

• President Biden has issued another student debt cancellation, erasing $6 billion worth of student loans for public service workers. (I am gobsmacked to learn that newsletter writing is not considered a public service.) I never thought I’d be this person, but Joseph, I beg you, next time: Pick me. Choose me. Love me. I’ll be at McGovern’s tonight, so if you do decide to sign the papers, meet me there.

• A “cascade” of misinformation on social media is convincing women to get off of birth control—a terrifying trend, given the current state of anything and everything having to do with abortion and childbearing.

• An “epidemic of rape” has engulfed several countries in Africa—most recently Ethiopia and Tigray, which were locked in civil war until 2022. An estimated 100,000 women in Tigray endured “conflict-related” sexual violence during the war and in the years following.

• Yesterday, Alabama’s governor signed a bill banning state funding for DEI initiatives in public schools, universities, and state agencies. What does that actually mean? The bill has eight main (wordy) prohibitions, including one that states the institutions cannot “require people to attend or participate in any diversity, equity, and inclusion program or any training, orientation, or course work that advocates for or requires assent to a divisive concept.” When did learning about inclusion in school become a “divisive concept”?

• Hey, Upper East Siders: Did you know people in your school district were trying to restrict transgender girls from participating in sports?

“AN UNEQUIVOCAL RIGHT TO BODILY AUTONOMY”

Reproductive Justice for All of Us

Rebecca Cokley on how to stop the violence disabled people experience

BY SHANNON MELERO

PARADE GOERS AT NEW YORK’S FIFTH ANNUAL DISABILITY PRIDE PARADE. (PHOTO BY ERIC MCGREGOR VIA GETTY IMAGES)

“It is better for all the world if…society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.”

That sentence, written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1927, was the defining sentiment behind the seminal Supreme Court decision Buck v. Bell—a case which allowed states to continue the practice of forcibly sterilizing those it deemed unfit to reproduce, namely people of color, the physically disabled, and those considered to have mental “deficiencies.”  In the specific situation behind Buck v. Bell, the plaintiff was Carrie Buck, a young white woman in Virginia who was forcibly sterilized for her “feeble-mindedness” under that state’s Eugenical Sterilization Act.

It would be easy to dismiss that ruling and Holmes’ words as a relic from another time if the practice of forced sterilization hadn’t lingered so long after that case. Over the course of the twentieth century, roughly 70,000 Americans (mostly women of color) were forcibly sterilized—a practice activist Fannie Lou Hamer famously labeled the “Mississippi appendectomy.” And while the work of activists like Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias, founder of the Committee to End Sterilization Abuse, brought some change in the 1970s, forced sterilization is still a painful reality: As of 2022, there are 31 states where the practice can be authorized by a judge and/or performed on a disabled person without their consent.

Rebecca Cokley—the preeminent activist and program officer of disability rights at the Ford Foundation—encountered this situation firsthand while giving birth to her daughter in 2013, and she shared the story onstage at Free Future 2023. As she was undergoing a C-section, Cokley recalled, her anesthesiologist said to her OBGYN, “While you’re down there, why don’t you go ahead and tie her tubes? Because kids like her don’t need to have kids.” Cokley’s OBGYN refused and, as Cokley put it, almost “jumped over the drape to beat him to a pulp.”

But for many disabled people in America, that kind of support is non-existent. Instead, they’re left at the mercy of a medical system that, by design, excludes them. A 2023 study published in The Lancet found that “32% of health care professionals hold explicit preferences for non-disabled people over disabled people.” And as Cokley explains, the practice of forced sterilization is part of a larger pattern of disabled people—”especially women and girls”—being denied bodily autonomy:  “You’re never told your body is yours and you have the right to say no,” she points out. “You’re never given ownership over your body.”

Other advances have helped safeguard the rights of disabled people in certain areas—from the educational reforms of Thomas H. Gallaudet in 1817 to the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. Cokley and others want to ensure that reproductive justice, and the rights of all people with disabilities to have children how and when they want, is on the table, too. “We have an unequivocal right to bodily autonomy, and to make these choices,” she says.

Cokley also notes, “Every policy recommendation moving forward on reproductive health, rights, justice, must include a disability lens. So when hearing about people having to travel across multiple states to access [abortion] care, I want the public to think. ‘So what would that mean if you’re disabled and say, don’t have access to accessible transportation, or need other assistance?’”

You can watch Cokley onstage at Free Future 2023, in conversation with Catalina Devandas, the UN’s first Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and human rights advocate Maryangel Garcia-Ramos, here. (Their session begins at 2:25:25.)

This series is a collaboration between the Gender, Ethic, and Racial Justice – International program at the Ford Foundation and The Meteor.

WEEKEND READING 📚

On the ground: Over a thousand Gazan children have survived unfathomable violence and been medically evacuated to surrounding countries where they live as refugees and amputees. One reporter asks: What will the rest of their lives look like? (The New Yorker)

On rising stars: USC’s Juju Watkins is ready to steal the spotlight during this year’s NCAA Tournament. As the kids say, she’s got the rizz. (The Washington Post)

On family trees: The unexpected way some people are discovering the prevalence of incest. (The Atlantic)

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