New York, April 23 (RHC)-- In New York City, authorities have removed a statue from Central Park of 19th century gynecologist J. Marion Sims, known as the “Father of Gynecology,” who repeatedly performed painful non-consensual scientific experiments on enslaved Black women without anesthesia. 

The removal of the statue comes after repeated protests last year, amid a nationwide wave of demonstrations against Confederate monuments and other racist statues. 

Author Harriet Washington, who wrote the book “Medical Apartheid,” told reporters that J. Marion Sims "bought, or otherwise acquired, a group of Black women who he housed in a laboratory, and over the period of five years and approximately 40 surgeries on one slave alone, he sought to cure a devastating complication of childbirth called vesicovaginal fistula.  This cure entailed repeatedly doing incisions on their genitalia, very painful and very emotionally difficult.  And in the end, he claims to have cured one of them.” 

Authorities in New York City says they will relocate the statue to a cemetery in Brooklyn where Sims is buried.