Dartmouth Events

Panel discussion about Elizabeth O'Brien's new book Surgery and Salvation: The Roots of Reproductive Injustice in Mexico, 1770-1940
Friday, October 27, 2023
10 a.m. - 12 p.m.
Rockefeller Center Class of 1930 Room

This event is sponsored by the Department of History and Society of Fellows.

Elizabeth O’Brien is Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. This discussion panel will explore Elizabeth O’Brien’s new book, Surgery and Salvation: The Roots of Reproductive Injustice in Mexico, 1770-1940, in conversation with the author. Panelists include Pamela Voekel (History/LALACS), Bethany Moreton (History), Abigail Neely (Geography), and Miriam Rich (Society of Fellows/History).

Book description:

In this sweeping history of medicine and reproductive surgery in Mexico, Elizabeth O'Brien traces the interstices of religion, reproduction, and obstetric racism from the end of the Spanish empire through the post-revolutionary 1930s.

The belief that medical interventions could redeem women, children, and the nation is what O’Brien refers to as "salvation though surgery." Eighteenth-century priests sought to save unborn souls through cesarean section, while nineteenth-century doctors aimed to salvage some unmarried women's social reputations via therapeutic abortion. By the twentieth century, eugenicists wished to regenerate the nation's racial profile, in part by sterilizing women in public clinics. As operations acquired racial and religious significances, Indigenous, Afro-Mexican, and mixed-race people's bodies became sites for surgical experimentation. This history illuminates the theological, patriarchal, and epistemological roots of obstetric violence and racism today.