Episode 16: The American Plan
Rock v. Carney
In 1918, teenager Nina McCall was detained, forcibly examined for an STI, and then imprisoned in a hospital for three months. Nina's story is horrifying, but it is not unique: throughout the 20th century, thousands of women endured similar ordeals, all thanks to an STI prevention program known as "The American Plan." Like many other women, Nina fought back, suing the officials responsible for her treatment. Could her lawsuit stop the Plan--or at least get her justice?
Episode Resources
Episode Transcript
Works Cited/
Referenced
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Beth Bergman, “AIDS, Prostitution, and the Use of Historical Stereotypes to Legislate Sexuality,” 21 The John Marshall Law Review 777 (1988).
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Allan M. Brandt, No Magic Bullet: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States since 1880 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).
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Tamar Lewin, “Rights of Citizens and Society Raise Legal Muddle on AIDS,” The New York Times, October 14, 1987, pp. 1, 44.
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Burnita Shelton Matthews, “The Woman Juror,” in Women Lawyers’ Journal Vol. 15, No 2 (January, 1927).
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Ada McVean, “The American Plan to Win World War I: Incarcerate Promiscuous Women,” McGill Office for Science and Society, February 17, 2023.
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David F. Musto, “Quarantine and the Problem of AIDS,” The Milbank Quarterly Vol. 64, Supplement 1. AIDS: The Public Context of an Epidemic (1986).
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“Poll Indicates Majority Favor Quarantine for AIDS Victims,” The New York Times, December 20, 1985.
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Nicole Hahn Rafter, “Prisons for Women, 1790-1980,” Crime and Justice Vol. 5 (1983).
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Douglas Shenson, “When Fear Conquers: a doctor learns about AIDS from leprosy,” The New York Times Magazine, February 18, 1988, pp. 35-36, 38, 48.
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Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1978).
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Scott W. Stern, “America's Forgotten Mass Imprisonment of Women Believed to Be Sexually Immoral,” History, last updated July 21, 2019.
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Scott W. Stern, “The Long American Plan: The U.S. Government’s Campaign Against Venereal Disease and Its Carriers,” Harvard Journal of Law and Gender Vol. 38, No. 2 (2015).
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Scott W. Stern, The Trials of Nina McCall: Sex, Surveillance, and the Decades-Long Government Plan to Imprison “Promiscuous” Women (Boston: Beacon Press, 2018).