Thoughts on Take My Hand

I recently finished reading the Dolen Perkins-Valdez book Take My Hand. This is a historical fiction novel inspired by two young black sisters who were sterilized without their knowledge by the federal government in the 1970s. Their family sued the government and won, changing health policy at the federal level.

I loved the book and found it difficult to put down, but this story hit me hard in several ways. Most personally, in an interview Perkins-Valdez said, "It's one thing to choose not to be a mother. It's another thing to have that choice taken away from you." This is something that I and some of my friends have wrestled with. I struggled for years to get pregnant. A lot about trying to get pregnant is difficult—e.g. sacrificing money to pay a fertility clinic for a process that should be natural and having to inject yourself with hormones on a daily basis. However, for me the hardest aspect was learning to accept how little control I had over the outcome (autonomy).

While I was making my peace with my inability to have children for no known reason, one of my best friends was taken in for an emergency hysterectomy. I still had reason to hope, but her autonomy needs were suffering in a different way. For medical reasons she lost the option to bear a child before she had her chance. She was a great comfort to me, and I'd like to think I was a comfort to her as we grieved together. (Just as I was ready to give up on the idea of having a child, I became pregnant, and it has been a great joy to me that my bestie has taken the time to forge a bond with my daughter.)

But going a step further with Perkins-Valdez's quote, it's yet another thing to have that choice taken away from you by the government that is supposed to be serving and protecting you (safety). Perkins-Valdez does a very good job of presenting some of the reasoning behind the decision to sterilize the girls. The dilemma is a great ethical question and is a reminder that practicality cannot be the only consideration when deciding policy for a government's citizens.

Professions Where You Have to Live with the Gravity of Your Mistakes

In the book the protagonist Civil is encouraged by friends and family to go on to medical school, but she sees herself as a nurse and pushes back against their encouragement. She asks:

To have people place their trust in me and then disappoint them would be devastating. I thought about the parade of health professionals testifying in the trial. How did they live with the gravity of their mistakes?

I have been thinking about this a lot lately, usually when I see stories in the news about police officers involved in a shooting, but also when I hear of other professionals who have to stand guard between life and death, such as doctors, EMTs, and pilots. Whenever you are in a life-or-death situation and the outcome is a fatality, you are bound to second-guess all of the choices that led up to the point of no return and have doubts about yourself and whether your choices were good enough, whether some better version of yourself may have done differently in the same situation and had a happier outcome. In these moments, our esteem needs suffer.

I find how we as a community react to mistakes by these professionals to be another intriguing dilemma. I do believe some grace is needed for those in high risk professions. Without grace, no one would go into those professions, and they are much needed. But there does need to be some accountability, too, right? We want individuals to be motivated to avoid punishment and go for the rewards. We also want to motivate individuals to constantly learn and improve. Investigations lead to lessons for both participants and observers. The more improvement, the fewer lives lost (or so we hope).

Additionally, there are people who do not belong in high risk professions, and the threat of punishment should help weed some of those folks out. I, for example, would be horrible in a life-or-death situation. I am a slow thinker. I need time to consider all options. Without that time, I panic and make poor decisions. Sure, training, protocols, and procedures help eliminate some of the need for decision-making in high pressure moments, but no training can cover every possible scenario. In outlier situations, a cool head and fast analysis is needed. Knowing I possess neither in an emergency, I have self-selected paths that don't require fast response times and have lower consequences for mistakes.

In the U.S. we are seeing some cities struggle to walk the line between forgiveness and accountability for their police departments. For my part, I am eternally grateful to all of those who serve in high risk positions, especially those who are often guarding against death. Did you consider risk when choosing your profession? If you are in a high risk profession, what factors overcame the downsides of risk in helping you to choose your career?

Note:

• The Perkins-Valdez quote is from her interview on “Beyond the Next Chapter with Whitney Clark,” released on August 16, 2022.