The American Plan: A Dark History of STI Control & Why It Matters Today
It’s been a while since I talked about The American Plan (no, I don’t mean Project 2025).
Several years ago, I learned about The American Plan. It was carried out by the U.S. Government and various health agencies, organizations, and associations. The goal was to combat the rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), specifically syphilis and gonorrhea, among American soldiers.
How did the plan work? Simple—they targeted women.
In 1918, women were arrested, incarcerated, and injected with mercury solely based on U.S. officials’ reasonable suspicions that women had an STI. A “reasonable suspicion” could mean anything from staying out too late to showing too much skin.
These women were often sec workers, but others suffered, too—poor women, women of color, and anyone who did not conform to the status quo. It wasn’t about health, it was about control.
Mercury was used under the guise of STI treatment, despite its known toxicity. Women were experimented on, much like other marginalized populations in U.S. history (e.g. Tuskegee Syphilis Study).
You can probably connect why I’m resurfacing this now. This history parallels current public health and legal debates around policing women’s bodies and reproductive rights, lack of accessible healthcare, and weaponizing public health to justify surveillance and control.
The U.S. American Plan is a cautionary tale: health and power without ethics quickly becomes abusive. I never thought I’d see parallels during my lifetime, but the incoming administration’s composition and actions remind us how easily health can be weaponized, threatening individual freedoms and bodily autonomy. The stakes couldn’t be higher.
All of this can be found in “The Trials of Nina McCall: Sex, Surveillance, and the Decades-Long Government Plan to Imprison Promiscuous Women” by Scott W. Stern. I have the book linked in my @bookshop_org (in my bio, I’d earn a small commission).
While I highly recommend the book, I’ll also share a summary link by the author in my stories.