An examination of hysterectomy and the struggle for bodily and reproductive autonomy
At least one hysterectomy is performed every minute of the year, making it the most common gynecological surgery worldwide. By the age of sixty-five, one out of five people born with a uterus will have it removed. So, why do we seldom talk about this surgery? Highly performed yet overlooked, examining the paradox of hysterectomy begins to unravel the various problems with how we medically treat uteruses and the people who have them.
Get It Out weaves centuries of medical history with rich qualitative data from 100 women, trans men, and nonbinary people who had, want, or are considering hysterectomy. In compelling detail, Andrea Becker reveals how America's healthcare system routinely deprives people of the ability to control their own bodies along race and gender lines. When people ask for a hysterectomy, they are often met with pushback: Are you sick enough? Old enough? Have you had enough babies? Will you regret this? How will your future husband feel about this? Yet this pushback is not equally experienced. While some people are barred access, others are ushered toward a hysterectomy. These contradictory recommendations reveal the persistent biases entrenched within healthcare.
Get It Out interrogates how little choice people with uteruses ultimately have over their reproductive health, and explores what these "choices" signify amid interlocking systems of inequality.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
"With insight, compassion, and a scalpel-sharp theoretical approach, Becker has blown open one of the most symbolically fraught, medically controversial, and culturally misunderstood surgeries. Her inquiry into the past and present of hysterectomy revives the reproductive justice framework, asking anew what it means to be able to be pregnant, how anxieties about the uterus as a symbol of womanhood, motherhood, and the family have warped medical judgement, how patients advocate for themselves amid a hostile political landscape and a scientific changing scientific one, and what it would really mean to have full, unconditional reproductive choice. A new, surprising, and essential read in the wake of Dobbs, Get it Out will change how you think about the uterus." - Moira Donegan, Journalist and Host of In Bed with the Right
"In Get It Out, Becker needfully probes the complicated, sometimes violent, and sometimes life-saving history of hysterectomy. The interviews in this book are deeply human - full of pain, fury, and relief. Altogether, they suggest a vision of the future in which everyone has the freedom to choose hysterectomy, and, by extension, the right of self-determination. This book is a testament to the kaleidoscopic experience of having, and losing, a uterus." - Sabrina Imbler, author of How Far the Light Reaches
"In Get It Out, Becker offers a thoughtful look at our complicated relationship with hysterectomies and invites us into the experiences of people who had the procedure to better understand how treatment of this organ is a proxy for our entire healthcare system. The stories of people of all genders will leave you wanting to rebuild our medical system for all. Get It Out is an essential read for all who care for bodies with and without uteruses, and those who want to liberate reproductive freedoms and protect bodily autonomy in medicine." - Renee Bracey Sherman, author of Liberating Abortion: Claiming Our History, Sharing Our Stories, and Building the Reproductive Future We Deserve
"Based on the silence around hysterectomy in our culture, you'd never guess that many millions of human beings around the world say goodbye to their uteruses every year. Where incarcerated, immigrant, Black and Indigenous gestational laborers are concerned, the removal of a uterus typically occurs with the ready help of U.S. surgeons, even as others - notably, white women and trans men - have to fight to get help in discarding the equipment of "biological motherhood." Why do our societies work so hard to keep this particular organ in some bodies while seeking to remove it from others, even as it causes myriad health problems and inconveniences those of us who have no use for it, to no end? Andrea Becker's Get It Out engages a completely ordinary yet conspicuously neglected practice of everyday healthcare, and demands that an overdue womb-reckoning take place." - Sophie Lewis, author of Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family
"In this terrific book, Becker sociologically excises the hysterectomy from its clinical setting to put it into vital conversation with people's lives and broader reproductive politics. Get It Out tells the multifaceted stories of individuals seeking to have their uterus removed and reveals not only the awful history but also the liberatory possibility of this common medical procedure. With immense care and gorgeous writing, Becker explores what it means to choose a hysterectomy in today's world - and whether it can even be choosable at all." - Miranda R. Waggoner, author of The Zero Trimester: Pre-Pregnancy Care and the Politics of Reproductive Risk
"An inclusive, compassionate, and clear-eyed investigation. Like hysterectomy itself, Get it Out speaks to the heart of who we are and how we inhabit our bodies." - Leah Hazard, author of Womb: The Inside Story of Where We All Began
"Get it Out offers an urgent intervention in lasting reproductive health inequalities. Examining the complicated narratives of cisgender women, trans, and nonbinary people who have had, or are considering having, a hysterectomy, Becker astutely shows how health access and experiences are shaped along the social fault lines of race, class, and gender. Not entirely a mournful experience, there is profound joy, too, in people's experiences with hysterectomy and having self-determination over their bodies and lives." - stef m. shuster, author of Trans Medicine: The Emergence and Practice of Treating Gender
"Get It Out puts the hysterectomy at the center of so many fundamental human experiences: the embodiment of gender, the meaning and validity of pain, the pursuit and management of fertility. Becker's book is provocative and powerful, and always rooted in the personal stories of their participants. Through this research, the hysterectomy becomes a microcosm that captures political and cultural questions of reproduction, social control, access to healthcare, and the value of trans lives, and thus has much to teach scholars and advocates alike." - Gretchen Sisson, author of Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood
"In Get It Out, Becker offers a groundbreaking examination of hysterectomy in America through the voices of those who've experienced it. Weaving together narratives of chronic illness management and gender care, Becker reveals how this medical procedure sits at the intersection of reproductive politics, bodily autonomy, and social power. Through meticulous research and powerful storytelling, she demonstrates how cultural ideas about gender and the body fundamentally shape medical care, while exposing how race and class influence access to and experiences of hysterectomy. This pioneering work transforms our understanding of how medical technologies both constrain and enable self-determination." - Laura Mamo, author of Sexualizing Cancer: HPV and the Politics of Cancer Prevention
"In this riveting new book, Becker explores how hysterectomies can be both a tool of reproductive coercion and a liberating technology. These stories expose how patriarchy and eugenics still affect access to this medical procedure." - Diana Greene Foster, author of The Turnaway Study
"This is indispensable reading on the persistent, violent inequalities in the medical system lurking just beneath the surface, and a thorough, harrowing examination of what 'choice' really entails in our reproductive lives. Becker's meticulous research and insight are a revelation." - Kylie Cheung, author of Survivor Injustice: State-Sanctioned Abuse, Domestic Violence, and the Fight for Bodily Autonomy
"Becker dedicates this book to the uterus, an understudied aspect of the body despite its central role in biological reproduction and the social construction of gendered systems. Blending history with contemporary stories, Becker demonstrates that hysterectomy exemplifies how systems of inequality constrain all reproductive decisions. Its trans-inclusive analysis helps expose how there can be both too many and too few hysterectomies. The book incorporates theories of biomedicalization, reproductive stratification, and medical gatekeeping while telling a new and important story about each. It is a must read for scholars of medicine, reproduction, gender, and social inequality." - Tracy A. Weitz, PhD, MPA, Professor of Sociology, American University
"A highly accessible and nuanced account of hysterectomy that traces its social underpinnings and reveals the continued operation of reproductive stratification along race and gender lines." - Krystale E. Littlejohn, author of Just Get on the Pill: The Uneven Burden of Reproductive Politics.
"[An] eye-opening debut study. This exploration of the uterus as 'a cultural battleground' is a must-read for healthcare professionals." - Publishers Weekly
"Becker examines feelings of relief, joy, grief, regret, and ambivalence... [Get it Out] weaves contemporary experiences with historical perspectives to holistically examine the issues surrounding hysterectomy." - Library Journal
"Through rich reportage, Get It Out is a welcome addition to public discourse on women's healthcare on the understudied subject of hysterectomies." - Foreword Reviews
"Fascinating and extremely timely." - Mother Jones
Andrea Becker is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Hunter College-CUNY. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, and Slate.
