Abstract
This is an ethnographic account of the cultural, psychologic, social, and medical factors leading to a Mexican American woman's decision to have a hysterectomy at the age of 26. It deliberately does not provide a general, statistical vision of the preponderance of hysterectomies in the United States. Rather, the aim is to plumb deeply into the life history of one woman to attain a deep understanding of the way in which the masculinist practice of medicine colludes with female disempowerment to produce tragic medical decisions. The article suggests that the new field of women's health must base itself on an awareness of how profoundly enmeshed a woman's medical history is within the whole of her life history. Further, it suggests that the medical provider will need to be as aware as the feminist ethnographer of how age and educational and class differences between herself and her subjects structure the medical relationship.
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