Hysterectomy: A Woman’s View of its Medical Facet, Historical Development and Ethical and Legal Questions

Abstract

The following text of Mariarosa Dalla Costa is the translation of a chapter from the book Gynocide: Hysterectomy, Capitalist Patriarchy and the Medical Abuse of Women. The author focuses there on the abuses performed on a mass scale, such as hysterectomies, ovariectomies, and clitoridectomies, arguing that they are a continuum
of violence against women that started with the beginning of capitalist development. This violence consists, above all, of systemic dispossession of women from access to medical knowledge in order to extend control over every sphere of social reproduction.