ever meant to provide agency? Again, this technology needs to be analyzed intersectionally, because it is not only a labour and gendered issue, but also a racialized one. The pill was tested on womxn in Puerto Rico because the side effects were questionable, and the laws in the continental United States prohibited spread of information about contraception. United States politicians and some Puerto Rican ones like Luis Muñoz Marín believed that contraception would help the economic development of the island and address problems of “overpopulation” which in itself is a highly problematic assumption.62 These trials were carried out on volunteer students in a Medical College in Puerto Rico whose grades were threatened to stop them from dropping out; on patients at Mental Health facilities; on prisoners in Correctional facilities; and on low income communities who were promised housing if they did not drop out. It is vital to note that in some situations, the subjects were not told that they were being tested for contraceptives, but rather were told they were being treated either for infertility or for diseases related to menstruation. They were not warned of any side-effects and when they received complaints, they blamed those on the “emotional super-activity of Puerto Rican women.”63 This analysis is not to undermine the agency that this technology gives to people with uteresus now, but is rather to note that that was never its intention. The pill was also tested on Palestinian womxn and these tests were celebrated because those developing this knowledge believed that those “polluted” bloodlines needed to be stopped from growing.64 It is to note that the world has never been designed for anyone other than the colonial standard human, and though marginalized communities are gaining agency from centuries of organizing and dissent, the privileges we enjoy today were created to harm us, and this knowledge is vital to begin to imagine alternative futures.
62. Prado de O. Martins, 51. 63. Ibid, 52. 64. Ibid, 53.
