Voices from the Past: Women, STDs, and Incarceration

At the close of World War I, American soldiers returned home from abroad with scars, wounds, stories and, in some cases, infections of which their romantic partners were unaware. When cities in Kansas noted the spike in sexually-transmitted diseases, they embarked upon a misguided quest to quell the infections by imprisoning the women these soldiers had infected (the soldiers didn't get arrested). So why did Kansas decide to imprison women for having STDs, how long did the program last, and why have so few people heard about it in the modern day?

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