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SUNDAY SCIENCE: MY ERRANT UTERUS  
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Monica J. Casper
January 14, 2025
Sapiens.org
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_ In a time of heightened threats to reproductive rights, a women’s
health scholar and mother of two comes face to face with her uterus. _


A person touches the keloid scar left from receiving a hysterectomy.,
Boris Zhitkov/Getty Images

 

I keep my uterus on the bottom shelf of my dresser.

It is cool and dark there, suitable for a preserved organ. Before my
hysterectomy in 2019, I kept it in its original container, my pelvis.
For most of my lifetime, since before my birth, it nested softly in
the company of my ovaries, fallopian tubes, bladder, and rectum. In my
teen years, it shed blood and tissue monthly, and much later, cradled
my daughters as they were developing fetuses. It was opened with a
scalpel during my cesarean sections in 2001 and 2004. The first
operation was an emergency, the second a surrender after 36 hours of
labor.

My uterus is an adventurous spirit, traveling to places even I have
not visited. Now it floats in a pool of formaldehyde in a white
plastic container next to my gym clothes.

Before telling you how my uterus ended up outside of my body, let me
tell you how being a person born with a uterus has shaped my life
experiences.

I was gendered female at birth and raised as such in the United
States. I identify as a woman, and this is important for the story I
tell and the ways that my body has been viewed and treated by health
care professionals. I am a mother to two young adult daughters, and I
am also a woman who has terminated two pregnancies. The first was at
age 19 after a diaphragm malfunction and the second was in my late
20s, during an emotionally abusive relationship unsuitable for
progeny.

I am also a sociologist and bioethicist of health, illness, bodies,
reproduction, gender-based violence, and trauma. I have written books
and articles on fetal surgery
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reproductive technologies, infant mortality
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maternal health, breast and cervical cancers, environmental toxins,
and more.

I am a women’s health expert, in more ways than one.

Several recent books
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explored the mysteries of the womb, revealing health scientists still
do not know much about how uteruses work
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Yet this has not prevented politicians
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and others from discussing them in congressional chambers, courtrooms,
and the media. At issue for many such “authorities” is who owns
the uterus. Or, rather, who owns the contents—most
specifically, embryos and fetuses
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pregnant uterus.

In April 2023, a uterus-shaped flower arrangement created by artist
Krissy Shields was placed outside the U.S. Supreme Court in
Washington, D.C.  Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

The answer to who owns the uterus might seem obvious, given that
uteruses are located _inside_ people’s bodies. Yet, surprisingly,
their ownership is contested.

Reproductive politics
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especially abortion, have dominated public discourse for decades in
the U.S. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in _Dobbs v. Jackson
Women’s Health Organization_
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overturned _Roe v. Wade_, undoing a half-century of nationwide access
to abortion. Numerous legislative bodies across the country have
passed
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to pass
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bans, fetal personhood laws
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or both. Such deliberations put uteruses—and the people in whose
bodies they reside—firmly at the center of debate.

Given these political stakes, I’ve thought a lot about what it means
to keep my uterus close—even now that it’s no longer housed in my
body.

✽

To answer the question of why I keep my uterus in my dresser, I need
to return to 2004, the summer after the birth of my second daughter,
when I decided to undergo a relatively new sterilization procedure.

The procedure involved transvaginal insertion of small, stint-like
objects into each fallopian tube, designed to cause scarring and
blockage, and thus to prevent contact between egg and sperm that might
result in pregnancy. Though I favor vasectomy as a safer alternative
to more intrusive forms of contraception and sterilization targeting
people with uteruses, it was important to me that I not become
pregnant again. I was 38 years old and certain I did not want more
children.

Eventually, after four years, my uterus came back to me. Its arrival
felt like a homecoming.

Prior to undergoing the procedure, I had already done extensive
research on the topic. In the early 2000s, I started a comparative
study of sterilization procedures globally, assessing both their
potential for abuse as well as their usefulness in enabling people to
manage their own reproduction. (According to the World Health
Organization, over 65 percent of people
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use some form of contraception, including sterilization.) I
interviewed company founders, scientists, ethicists, and critics;
reviewed U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) records
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and assessed the clinical and scientific literature.

Still, I was a very early user in the U.S. of the sterilization
procedure I chose—so early, in fact, that my physician in Washington
State had not yet done five insertions, thereby necessitating that a
company representative be in the room with us. This was not a
requirement of the FDA but rather of the manufacturer itself. (Of
course, I interviewed the representative while I was undergoing the
procedure.)

Unfortunately, the procedure turned out to be too good to be true.

Many users of the technology developed serious problems
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from ectopic pregnancies to abdominal pain to migration of the device.
A Facebook group for users
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stories reached more than 43,000 members. Soon, there
were class-action lawsuits
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legal challenges are why I do not name the technology here). The best
medical practices for managing the device shifted, too, with doctors
recommending partial or full hysterectomies for removal. Though in my
case, the device had done what it was supposed to do—prevent
pregnancy—I grew worried about its long-term effects,
especially when evidence emerged
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leach toxic metals into my body.

After consulting with my own doctor in Arizona, who was not the same
physician who had inserted the device, I chose to undergo a partial
hysterectomy. The surgery removed my uterus, fallopian tubes, and the
device, but left my ovaries and cervix in place.

And this is when my womb began to have an adventure of its own.

✽

After its removal, my uterus was transported from the hospital in
Tucson, where I had undergone surgery, to an undisclosed location in
Florida. I had hoped to see it before it was whisked away, but alas, I
was unable to. In Florida, it was retained as evidence by a facility
that houses biological specimens involved in litigation.

I thought often about my uterus, imagining it stacked on a shelf
alongside other body parts in formaldehyde, like a cabinet of
curiosities. I did not experience its absence as a phantom pain, as
when people lose limbs. But I did develop a new and slightly
unsettling relationship to my reproductive organs. I started to
perceive a hollow in my abdomen. Sometimes, I still imagine my
unmoored ovaries swaying gently in peritoneal fluid, like seaweed.

Eventually, after four years, my uterus came back to me. One day, I
returned home from work and found a somewhat battered carton on the
front porch; inside was my uterus. It was away from me for so long
that I had forgotten I had checked the box on the hospital form that
said I wanted it back.

But I am very glad that I did, because its arrival felt like a
homecoming.

I promptly placed the plastic bucket containing my uterus into the
refrigerator next to the arugula, before realizing it did not need to
be kept cold. This is how it ended up in my dresser. It took me a
while to look more closely at my uterus, in part because I first
needed to purchase high-quality protective gear. (The pandemic had
normalized consumer availability of such technologies; I bought mine
on Amazon.)

On a sunny day in October 2023, I donned the respirator mask and
safety goggles. This alarmed my dogs, who eyed me as if I was an
intruder intent on stealing their biscuits. Warily, they followed me
from the kitchen into the bedroom, where I removed the container from
my dresser. It was about the size of a Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket
and enveloped in hazard tape. I carried it gingerly into the bathroom,
locking the door behind me to keep out the dogs.

The author dons protective gear to inspect her uterus, preserved in a
container filled with formaldehyde. Monica J. Casper

Sitting on the bathroom floor with the ceiling fan whirring, I first
photographed the entire apparatus. Then, I removed the hazard plastic.
Next, I photographed the label on the container’s lid, which
included the words “Pathology Specimen,” my first and last names,
and a date, 12/12/19—the date of my hysterectomy.

Unscrewing the lid turned out to be difficult. After several tries,
worrying that I would spill the contents, I managed to loosen the lid
enough to pry it open. Peering inside, I saw a fist-sized,
rust-colored object floating in greenish fluid. It reminded me of vats
of chemical waste that comic-book humans fall into before becoming
superheroes or archvillains. Another smaller, darker blob rested on
the container’s floor, a few inches from the larger object. I was
grateful for my protective gear, as the fluid looked noxious; I could
almost smell it through the mask.

The larger object looked like meat. It reminded me of a turkey’s
vital organs that my family and I fry up for the dogs at Thanksgiving.
Floating in formaldehyde, the blob could have been a science
experiment gone wrong. Or the detritus of a failed cooking show. Or an
illegally trafficked human organ. Or an especially clever way to scare
a child. What it did not look like was what it actually was: a human
uterus.

✽

Examining my uterus made me wonder how many people view their own
internal body parts after having them removed. Would they even want
to?

When I tell people that I store my uterus in the dresser, they react
with fascination, horror, and/or amusement. A few ask how I was able
to keep it, given that hospitals often retain extracted organs for
legal and other reasons. I explain about the sterilization procedure
and the hysterectomy, and then I tell them that I am working with a
taxidermist to creatively preserve and display my uterus. I hope to
take it to conferences with me as a part of presentations and talks.
One day, my youngest daughter will have it; she has told me she wants
it because it was her first home.

Most cultural representations of uteruses, including plushy dolls
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with faces
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sanitize the visceral fleshiness of the organ. Such representations
also disconnect the uterus from the people in whose bodies they are
located. But in or out of my body, my uterus belongs to me. It is both
evidence and treasure, the embodiment of what I have gone through as a
woman, a mother who had two cesarean sections, and a women’s health
scholar.

_MONICA J. CASPER
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a sociologist and creative writer who studies gender, health, bodies,
violence, and trauma. She’s the dean of the College of Arts and
Sciences
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Seattle University, and she received her Ph.D. from the University of
California, San Francisco. Casper is the author of seven books,
including Babylost: Racism, Survival, and the Quiet Politics of
Infant Mortality, from A to Z
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is currently researching traumatic brain injury in athletes, veterans,
and survivors of domestic violence. Follow her on LinkedIn
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_SAPIENS is a digital magazine about everything human, told through
the stories of anthropologists._

_In January 2016, we launched SAPIENS with the aim of bringing
together the voices of scholars who are eager to share the findings,
ideas, and perspectives of anthropology with a broad global
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__

Celtic Women Held Sway in ‘Matrilocal’ Societies
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Becky Ferreira
New York Times
An ancient cemetery reveals a Celtic tribe that lived in England 2,000
years ago and that was organized around maternal lineages, according
to a DNA analysis.
January 15, 2025

* Science
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* Medicine
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* laws
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* sexual reproduction
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* Gender
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* Gender Violence
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* embryos
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* fetuses
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* uterus
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* Women
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* womens rights
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