According to Global Pre-Meds, an OB/GYN looks after women from the moment of conception to when a baby is born. They can specialize in two subfields, Obstetrics or Gynecology. A gynecologist specializes in female reproductive health and Obstetrics doctor in dealing with the health of newborns. People with female reproductives are the core of this field of medicine, however, the uterus and ovaries of enslaved Black women are the core of this field too. If you do a quick google search of a brief history of the OB/GYN field, you will find the admirable James Marion Sims at the forefront. The father of American Gynecology. We constantly thank this man for his perfected procedures that today save millions of women around the world. However, someone's uterus had to be used to get to this perfection.
Doctors back in the 1800s were not revered as they are today, they were not trusted and American medicine was very much still in the dirt. Most of the medicinal knowledge acquired was from other countries that had renowned medicine procedures. American doctors started to venture into creating or perfecting procedures to get their foot in the game and make themselves a legitimate field in America and the OB/GYN field was no different.
Given that it was the 1800s, a time where America flourished off the backs of enslaved people, doctors would also use them as lab rats for their procedures. During this time, a lot of stigma around Black people being less susceptible to pain, Black Midwives being ignorant beings, and Black women knowing nothing of their bodies were bred and grew into the medical racism that is still negatively impacting Black patients today.
During the prime of James Marion Sims, he was a slave owner who used the enslaved women as his test subjects repeatedly cutting their genitals without anesthesia as the women were forcibly held down. Every procedure was a bloody battle between the women and doctors. However, not only did these women have to endure the horrid experimentation they had to complete many of the labors around the plantation, in addition to having to learn the procedures from Sims himself. What I say is an understatement to their importance, but they were his slaves, test subjects, and nurses.
With that being said, it is awful that medicine forgets the names of these women that built the OB/GYN field and are able to have procedures today. Their names are Anarcha, Betsy, and Lucy and they are the Mothers of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
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