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    The Sun InterviewBy Naomi PittsStandards of CareRolonda Donelson on Bias and Anti-Science Attitudes in Medicine

    The reason Black women were used to develop the field of gynecology was because they were no more than property. They weren’t seen as people; they were just seen as things. The controlling of Black women’s bodies started with chattel slavery, but it continues today.

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    Readers WriteBy Our ReadersMilk

    Pumped for an infant, spilled at the dinner table, used as a tear gas antidote

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James Lainsbury

James Lainsbury has worked as a logger, editor, and many things in between. He is a Mainer by birth but is currently nestled between Interstate 90 and the rail yard in Missoula, Montana, with his girlfriend and a moody springer spaniel. His essay “Control” is part of a larger, unpublished work.

Essays, Memoirs & True Stories

Control

In a procedure called a uterosigmoidostomy, surgeons connected my bladderless ureters to my colon. They couldn’t hook them directly to my urethra, because my penis would have become a spigot without a shut-off valve. Instead, urine and feces mixed in my colon, and I shit a muddy river. At three, I didn’t know there was anything wrong with this.

April 2003
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