Dr. Caroline Still Anderson: An Advocate for African American Women's Healthcare
It is important to acknowledge the critical context of racial politics in the United States in the late nineteenth century in order to fully grasp the significance of Dr. Anderson’s work on uterine fibroids. In her discussion and analysis of Dr. Atlee’s work on fibroids, Dr. Anderson describes several case studies of women who were treated by Dr. Atlee. One of these cases goes as follows:
"...“a rough, irregular, tumor-like mass presented in the vagina upon what seemed an inverted uterus,” it was removed, and found to be the body of the uterus."[1]
The story of this unnamed victim of Dr. Atlee’s accidental hysterectomy resounds amongst the cries of centuries of black women, whose bodies were disrespected, abused, and controlled by colonizers and by society at large, and her tragedy precedes that of decades of people forcibly sterilized by the institutions and medical practitioners of the United States. In Shatema Threadcraft’s, Intimate Justice: The Black Female Body and the Body Politic, Threadcraft writes,
"Sterilization abuse proved particularly haunting for black women... They were struck by how easily they fit within a set of critical events within black women’s sexual, reproductive, and caretaking history in America-a history that, as Jael Silliman states, was ‘shaped by coercion, cruelty and brutality.’"[2]
Here Threadcraft and Silliman highlight the particular significance of sterilization abuse to black women. By contributing to the discussion of the care and treatment of fibroids, Dr. Anderson is not only promoting the overall health and well-being of black female bodies, but she is also shining a beacon of light upon the dark history of brutality and neglect surrounding black women’s sexual and reproductive health.
Today, the disproportionate impact of uterine fibroids on African American women remains an understudied issue. According to a 2013 study published in the Journal of Women’s Health,
"Uterine fibroids have a disproportionate impact on African-American women. There are, however, no data to compare racial differences in symptoms, quality of life, effect on employment, and information-seeking behavior for this disease."[3]
More research needs to be done in this area in order for considerable change to be enacted. Dr. Anderson’s work on this subject remains relevant both from an academic standpoint, and a cultural one. Dr. Anderson’s work in the field of fibroids was instilled with an awareness of the plight of black women’s inadequate access to medical care, and her contributions were both academically substantial and deeply meaningful to African American patients and professionals.
Works Cited:
[1] Still, 1878. 36.
[2] Threadcraft, Shatema. Intimate Justice: the Black Female Body and the Body Politic. Oxford University Press, 2018. pp. 5.
[3] Stewart, 2013.