New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered the relocation of a controversial Civil War-era physician's statue out of Central Park April 16, according to CBS New York.
The statue of James Marion Sims, MD, will be moved from its location in the park to an area near Dr. Sims' grave in a cemetery in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Protesters asked city officials to move the statue last fall following a national movement to remove public statues commemorating figures from the Confederacy.
Dr. Sims, regarded by some experts as "the father of gynecology," allegedly conducted experimental operations on at least 10 enslaved black women without their consent, according to a report published in the Journal of Medical Ethics in 1993.
An April 16 statement from the mayor's office, obtained by CBS New York, referred to Dr. Sims as "a noted obstetrician and gynecologist whose medical advances were achieved through practice of surgical techniques on enslaved Black women."