Sterilization of Latinas has targeted women of different Latin American identities, including those from Puerto Rico and Mexico for many years in the United States. There is a significant history of such sterilization practices being conducted involuntarily, in a coerced or forced manner, as well as in more subtle forms such as that of constrained choice. Coerced sterilization is defined as any sterilization procedure performed without the patient's full, free, and informed consent. This includes procedures carried out through misinformation, language barriers, or under conditions of institutional pressure. The sterilization of Latinas in the United States is rooted in eugenic ideology and racial discrimination. It has a long history of targeting marginalized groups including women of ethnic and racial minorities, women with disabilities, women with HIV and poor women. Coercive sterilization has also been widley recognized as a violation of fundamental human rights and bodily autonomy. Additionally, forced sterilization was permissible by multiple states throughout various periods in the 20th century. Issues of state sterilization have persisted as recently as September 2020. Some sources credit the practice to theories of racial eugenics.
Background The development of eugenics in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries created a foundation for policies targeting marginalized populations for sterilization. Eugenic ideology promoted the belief that sterilization would prevent "undesirable" children from being born. Undesirable traits correlated with reproductive fitness which included race and ethnicity. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the immigration rates in the United States spiked along with the reproduction rates in immigrant families. This provoked a deeper fear from eugenicists that native born Americans and Americans with strong reproductive fitness would be outnumbered by immigrants who possess a low reproductive fitness. This fear became ingrained into many Americans across the nation and became fuel for the sterilization of Latinas movements in the twentieth century.
Latina women were particularly vulnerable to eugenic sterilization policies due to racialized beliefs that cast them as inferior and unfit to reproduce. In California, eugenics programs were tied to broader efforts to reduce immigration from Mexico. Mexican American women were stereotyped as excessively fertile, unfit parents, criminally inclined, and intellectually inferior. Figures in support of Eugenics advocated for and promoted these beliefs to the public. Charles M. Goethe played a key role in popularizing eugenic ideas in California, and he founded the Eugenics Society of Northern California. He framed Latino immigrants, particularly those from Mexico, as threats to the nation's social and genetic "fitness." He promoted sterilization as a means of racial and social improvement.
Some of the factors that may catapulted the movement behind the sterilization abuse in Latina women in the state of California, began with one of the earliest organizations in eugenic sterilizations in the U.S., the Human Betterment Foundation (HBF), the Sterilization Act of 1909, and the Immigration Act of 1924. The California Act of 1909 was one of the major legal and political influences that established authority for doctors and psychiatrists of state hospitals and mental institutions to perform sterilizations on the people unfit to function in society because of their intelligence levels, presumed future deviant behavior and sexual activity. With that established, organizations such as the Human Betterment Foundation came to be the organization that held these ideologies and promote eugenic sterilizations and the Immigration Act of 1924 further developed the idea that labor-migrants were needed, but women and children were not as there was a fear of Latino and Immigrant invasion.
The Human Betterment Foundation (1929–1942) The Human Betterment Foundation operated in California from 1929 to 1942. In those years, the foundation specialized in researching eugenic sterilizations effects, providing literary contributions of their findings to the public. The foundation distributed literature, such as this in order to promote the efficacy of sterilizations among socially- Sterilizations during this time were promoted and imposed in state institutions.
In the pamphlet, the organization describes that the problem is families living on government assistance or "public charity" use more of the public charity than those families sustaining themselves more by 50 percent. The pamphlet stated that families whose children ended up in state homes were increasingly doubling, at a fast rate. The foundation too states that additional children to the state is a burden, but also that taxation rates were increasing because of more children being in need along with the notion that with more children from unfit parents would increase crime and delinquency rates.
And another example of anti-Latino sentiment was with state authorities when dealing with minorities. Immigrants that were feeble minded and at borderline intelligence were of the undesirable type. California's state authorities wrote in a survey conducted by the California State Board of Charities and Corrections that Latinos of low intelligence or mental sanity were of the undesirable types. State institutions that were allowed to perform sterilizations on patients that seemed like the perfect candidate, was very common. Current research shows that Latinas were targets for sterilization at higher rates than white women. The disproportion among sterilization rates in the Latino community could not be quantified in its current time, but data from sterilization forms suggest that 88 percent of Californians with a Spanish last name were of Mexican origin and descent. The surnames of people in forms recommending institutionalized patients between 1920 and 1945 shows that Latino were more likely to be sterilized than non-Latino men and Latina women experienced sterilization at higher rates than non-Latina women. This data shows that there was an unfair application of the California law that allowed institutions to take health measures for other people on their behalf.
The California Sterilization Act of 1909 This law passed in California in 1909, authorized medical staff like doctors and medical superintendents to perform sterilization procedures on both men and women deemed as feeble-minded, whose mental diseases, IQ, and intelligence could be passed down to future generations. A survey in mental deviations in prisons, public schools, and orphanages in California institutions reported worriness of feeble-mindedness and relation of intelligence to previous delinquency record. In their survey, they found that California had drawn a large proportion of immigrants of undesirable types and would therefore recommend them to sterilization processes. Statistical evidence demonstrates that there the number of sterilizations were disproportionate to racial and ethnic minorities, such as people of low class and female gender. Research also suggests that Latina women were targeted at significantly higher rates than non-Latinas. A 2018 study by Novak and colleagues analyzed over 17,000 forms recommending institutionalized patients for sterilization between 1920 and 1945. The researchers found that Latinas had a 59% greater risk of sterilization compared to non-Latinas. These findings of disproportionate sterilization represent how eugenic thinking reinforced racial stereotypes that portrayed Latinas as inferior and unfit to reproduce.
Immigration Act of 1924 Anti-miscegenation laws, along with the Immigration Act of 1924, contributed to the anti-immigrant sentiment that existed during the development of United States history. At this point in time, the United States was concerned with foreigners coming into the country in higher numbers and therefore enforced its first border patrol and regulated the number of foreign immigrants from south and eastern Europe, as well as permitting people from the southern people specialized in agriculture and work from the southern border. In the forgotten narrative of Latin American History, U.S., Mexican immigrants and citizens were labeled and seen as a problem in society because they were seen as hyper-fertile and supported theories that Mexicans were of a lower racial level. By the first half of the 20th century, almost 60,000 people had been sterilized under the different U.S. Eugenics Programs implemented.
Sterilization by ethnicity
Puerto Rican women The history of sterilizations in the United States and Puerto Rico can be defined as an intersectional form of oppression that connects race, class, and sex to the social, political, and economic status of Puerto Ricans. The oppressive nature of these procedures lie within the fact that they were politically backed and used within the court of law against Puerto Ricans. Other women on the island experienced an increase in surveillance and control of their body within social realms. This illustrates how sterilizations were conducted on a continuum and had vast as well as long lasting consequences. In 1947, 7% of mothers aged 20–49 received tubal ligation which almost doubled in 1954 as sterilizations increased on the island to 16%. By 1965, over 34% of Puerto Rican women within this age bracket received sterilizations, which is five times the rate two decades prior. Sterilization was the most heavily promoted method of contraception in Puerto Rico and was legitimized by concerns of population, which can be associated with the same concerns of race and class that date back to the island's annexation.
After the US gained ownership of Puerto Rico, it was viewed as a province in urgent need of a way to prevent greater poverty and population rates. This heavily influenced the US decision to begin sterilizing Puerto Rican women and implementing experimental birth control methods. Puerto Rican women in particular have served as test subjects for various contraceptive studies in the United States, of which included involuntary sterilization. Many Puerto Rican women were sterilized from the 1930s to the 1970s in order to decrease poverty and population growth in Puerto Rico.
Population and poverty crisis Concerns about the population density in Puerto Rico can be traced back to 1898 when Puerto Rico became a US colony. These concerns from scholars, scientist, and government officials inform the thought process behind the association between poverty, health, and economy with population throughout the 20th century.