Anarcha Westcott was an enslaved African woman whose life and suffering became central to the development of modern gynecology. For decades, her story was nearly invisible, surviving only in the writings of Dr. J. Marion Sims, the physician who performed experimental surgeries on her.
Anarcha was still a teenager when she was forced into the responsibilities of adulthood. Like many enslaved girls, she lived under a system where her body was treated as property and where motherhood was not a choice but an expectation. White masters wanted enslaved women to give birth early because every child born on the plantation became their property. After the United States ended the international slave trade in 1808, reproduction on plantations became even more valuable.
For this reason, many enslaved girls were pushed into pregnancy as soon as they were physically capable. Sexual violence from enslavers and white men was common, while enslaved boys and men were paired with girls by plantation owners to produce children. Anarcha’s pregnancy at about fourteen was a result of this environment.
Her first childbirth ended in a stillbirth and caused severe injuries, including a vesicovaginal fistula and a rectovaginal fistula. These injuries left her unable to control her urine or feces, causing intense pain, infections, inflamed tissue, and social humiliation. Such injuries were tragically common among enslaved girls forced to give birth before their bodies were fully developed.
This condition brought Anarcha to the attention of Dr. J. Marion Sims, who sought to develop surgical techniques to treat fistulas. She was brought to a small hospital in Montgomery, Alabama, where Sims conducted experimental operations on her and other enslaved women with similar injuries.
Over several years, Sims performed roughly thirty operations on Anarcha. While opium was given as pain relief, she was denied access to anesthesia such as ether or chloroform, which white women often received at the time. Enslaved women had no right to refuse these procedures, and their enslavers frequently consented in hopes of restoring them to labor.
Though Sims later became known as the “father of modern gynecology,” his success rested on the repeated suffering of women like Anarcha. The techniques perfected through these experiments became the first successful surgical treatments for vesicovaginal fistulae, laying the foundation for modern gynecological care.
On December 21, 1856, Anarcha, then about thirty-two, was admitted to Sims’ Woman’s Hospital in New York and discharged a month later as cured. Her owner at the time was William Lewis Maury of Virginia.
There is no clear record of what happened to Anarcha after the surgeries ended. Some accounts suggest she returned to field labor. Others say she was eventually sold and later died in Virginia, though this is uncertain.
For generations, Anarcha’s story was hidden while J. Marion Sims was celebrated. Her suffering, and that of other enslaved women, was ignored. This erasure reflects how Black women’s bodies were exploited while their lives were overlooked.
In recent years, efforts have been made to honor Anarcha. Scholars and activists now recognize her as one of the Mothers of Modern Gynecology. A monument in Montgomery, Alabama commemorates her and the other women who endured similar experiments.
Sources:
https://www.essence.com/news/mothers-of-gynecology/
https://blogs.jpmsonline.com/2014/11/29/how-we-got-this-far-remembering-the-horrifying-medical-experiments-of-the-past/
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/04/j-marion-sims/558248/
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/17/603163394/-father-of-gynecology-who-experimented-on-slaves-no-longer-on-pedestal-in-nyc
