Publisher's Synopsis
In 1918, just days before her eighteenth birthday, Nina McCall was told to report to the local health officer for an STD examination. Confused and humiliated, McCall did as she was told, and the health officer performed a hasty (and invasive) examination and quickly diagnosed her with gonorrhea. Though McCall insisted she could not possibly have an STI, she was coerced into committing herself to the Bay City Detention Hospital--a facility in which she would spend almost three miserable months subjected to humiliation, experimentation, and painful injections of mercury. Scott Stern tells the story of this almost forgotten program through the life of Nina McCall. Her story provides crucial insight into the lives of countless other women incarcerated under the American Plan. In an age of renewed activism surrounding healthcare, prisons, women's rights, and the power of the state, The Trials of Nina McCall is crucial reading.
