Stamm, Karen

Karen Stamm was an activist in the women's health and reproductive righs movements of the 1970s and 1980s, notably through her role in the Committee to End Sterilization Abuse (CESA) and its successor, the Committee for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse (CARASA). Karen Stamm helped found and at some point chaired committees in both organizations. Both CESA and CARASA were committed to creating a more inclusive reproductive rights movement that took into account the fact that all women did not have equal control of their reproduction and that this choice was in fact limited by race and class. Both rejected the notion that overpopulation was the cause of social and economic ills, called for the end of sterilization abuse as a means of population control, and advocated for the economic conditions that were necessary to undergird economically disadvantaged women’s right to choose freely.