Andréa Becker in conversation with Moira Donegan

Andréa Becker in conversation with Moira Donegan

City Lights and NYU Press celebrate the publication of

Get It Out: On the Politics of Hysterectomy

By Andréa Becker

Published by NYU Press

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, Andréa 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.

Andréa Becker is a medical sociologist, researcher, and writer. She 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.

Moira Donegan is a writer and critic who covers gender, politics, and the law. She is a writer in residence at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University. She has been a regular contributor to The Guardian and her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, and Bookforum. She has been an editor at The New Republic and n+1, and her first book, Gone Too Far: MeToo, Backlash, and the Future of Feminist Politics, is forthcoming from Scribner.

Made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation