User:Drojasra/Sterilization of Latinas

Lead
Some of the factors that 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
The Human Betterment Foundation operated in California from 1929-1942. 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. Later research shows 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 Latinas were targets for sterilizations at higher rates than white women because data from sterilization forms collected, the number of people with Spanish surnames suggests that 88 percent of these patients were of Mexican origin and descent.

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.

Jovita Rivera
Jovita Rivera was one of the ten plaintiffs in the federal class action suit of Madrigal v. Quilligan. On October 12, 1973, Rivera went to the USC-LA hospital to give birth to her second child. She was under medication and in labor pains when medical staff (mis)informed her about the risk and chances of getting pregnant right after birth. She consented and a tubal ligation was done.

Jovita, only 27 at the time, states that during her stay at the hospital, while in advanced labor and under pain medication due to complications, her doctor told her she would be a burden to the government.

Women like Rivera were offered the choice of sterilization under poor circumstances, under medication, and with no language assistance for translation. Some of the other plaintiffs for this case faced hostility from staff when told they could receive more pain medication if they signed papers consenting to sterilization.

In Rivera’s own words she stated:

“... the doctor told me that I had too many children, that I was poor, and a burden to the government and I should sign a paper not to have more children [. . .] The doctors told me that my tubes could be untied at a later time and I could still have children.”

While Rivera was under distress, she believed the process was reversible and consented. When Rivera and the other plaintiffs testified in court to prove that they had been coerced into getting a procedure, the judge did not rule in their favor.

Lead
In Los Angeles, hundreds of Mexican women were sterilized after giving birth at Los Angeles County Hospital. In the documentary, No Mas Bebes, some of the women who were sterilized at this hospital shared their experiences. All of the women had something in common, they did not want to be sterilized. "In California, at least into the 1950s, compulsory sterilization was consistently described as a public health strategy that could breed out undesirable defects from the populace and fortify the state as a whole".

Article Body Guadalupe Acosta
In 1973, Acosta was living in Los Angeles. She was a poor Mexican woman. She gave birth to a child with brain damage so unfortunately he did not survive. The doctor sterilized her stating that her husband had given permission for a tubal ligation, he denied giving such consent. In an interview done by Claudia Dreifus Guadalupe stated “My nerves and my head are in great pain. Ever since the operation, I am very inattentive. Not forgetful, inattentive. People sometimes have to tell me things twice. I am not there”. Acosta passed away in 2003. Her life was full of misfortune. She had a baby in Mexico but it was taken away from her because the infant was born out of wedlock. The baby that she delivered at Los Angeles Hospital was her fourth baby. Her husband left her and her two kids due to her tubal ligation.

No Mas Bebes
The film No Más Bebes tells the story of women who fought for their reproductive rights. Several women tell their stories of how they were sterilized without their proper consent. Hundreds of women got their tubes tied during the late 1960s to the early 1970s at this hospital. The women were immigrants from Mexico and most understood little to no English. Many of the women did not know they had been sterilized until months or years later.

Californias Law
The forced sterilizations in California began in 1909 when a eugenics law was passed. It allowed doctors to sterilized people who were thought to be "unfit" to have children at state hospitals. Before this law was nullified in 1979, more than 20,000 people, including teenagers were victims of this sterilization. This law was meant to keep the "undesirable population" from growing. Women of Latina Origin were 59% more likely to be sterilized than women who were not of latino descent.

Lead
The tragic 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.

When Americans began to occupy the island of Puerto Rico, they asserted more than their ideals and beliefs. American colonizers asserted absolute dominance over Puerto Rico due to the idea of Manifest Destiny, which greatly shifted the dynamics of the island. The U.S. capitalized on the fact that Puerto Rico utilized a large fraction of its resources to gain independence from Spain, which left the island's economy depleted. During this time, many Puerto Ricans lost land while their natural resources became exploited. In the mid-1920’s, Puerto Rico’s dependency on the production of sugar, devastated the island when the sugar market collapsed. Additionally, the nation-wide economic depression in 1927 exacerbated the effects of this collapse as well as the overall stability of the island. In 1928, Puerto Rico suffered the consequences of a hurricane in San Felipe. The Okeechobee Hurricane resulted in over 300 deaths and property damages ranging from $50-$80 million, while the agricultural market also suffered. In the 1930’s, Puerto Rican citizens began to experience the adverse health effects of tuberculosis, malaria, diarrhea-enteritis, hookworm, and dietary-deficiencies that were responsible for over 40 percent of deaths. This later on gave medical professionals grounds to support sterilization on the island.

Furthermore, these factors resulted in immense and widespread poverty. Many Puerto Ricans faced perpetual hunger and growing unemployment rates. In 1930, the median family income was reported to be approx. $250 a year and “economically productive families” were attributing around 94% of their income toward acquiring food. Additionally, 27% of the labor force was unemployed.

The current state of Puerto Rico confirmed the ideals Americans projected in the midst of the island’s annexation about the longevity and potential of Puerto Rico. Puerto Ricans were once again viewed as ignorant and devious as they participated in “reckless breeding” in the midst of this economic downward spiral. This caused many Americans and a fraction of Puerto Ricans to believe that overpopulation essentially was the cause of the wide variety of problems on the island.

Messages about Puerto Rico’s increase in population began to spread rapidly by citizens, government officials, scientist, and industrial leaders/capitalist. In 1899, the population of Puerto Rico was less than a million and in 1917 was half of the population size that it would be four decades later. In the 1930’s, Puerto Rico had a population growth rate of approximately 1.5%, while fertility rates were lower than developed and industrialized nations. According to Puerto Rico's planning report decades later, the island's population has grew from 687 people per square mile in 1960 to 793 in 1970. This growth continued as the population was 815 in 1972, 863 in 1973, and 871 in 1974. Concurrently, the death rate decreased to 6.5 per 1,000 persons as the brith rate the year before was 23.3. As the increase in population grew by 2 percent each year, Puerto Rico was predicted to have the population density of 4,339,000 by the year 2000, which is also 1300 inhabitants per square mile. Nonetheless, birth control thus became the primary solution for health concerns, poverty, and this idea of overpopulation.

Operation Bootstrap
Operation Bootstrap was enacted in 1948 and was the result of Puerto Rico’s desire to attract outside capitol by inviting U.S. private funds. Therefore, a tax arrangement was created by the U.S. to strengthen the industrial production on the island in an effort to increase profits and funnel money to the mainland. This economic development program enticed industries within the U.S. that were in search of “cheap labor, tax exemptions, and free trade between Puerto Rico and the mainland”.

This rapid foreign investment provided promise for disadvantaged Puerto Rican women who were struggling to navigate through oppressive domestic conditions and limited job opportunities. Operation Bootstrap was marketed and believed to be an advantageous new service sector for women in search of white collar jobs. Unfortunately, Puerto Rican women and the vast majority of the island experienced the exact opposite. Operation Bootstrap resulted in “high unemployment, increased migration, exacerbated poverty”, and most importantly, economic colonization.

Coerced and Forced Sterilizations
United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women defines forced sterilizations as a method of medical control of an individual's fertility without consent. Essentially involving the battery of an individual—violating their physical integrity and security, forced sterilization constitutes violence against women and men. Another source adds that sterilization abuse is any procedure completed without the patient knowing they are being sterilized as well as when the patient is coerced or deceived in order to obtain the consent to the procedure. Many Puerto Rican women were manipulated through incorrect information, language barriers, incentivization, testing, and withholding information as they knowingly or unknowingly consented to sterilization. Although, in some cases sterilization was completely voluntary and consented. In fact, the Puerto Rican government conducted a study that stated that 83 percent of 3000 families supported sterilizations that were free. In 1968, 75 percent of the women that had sterilizations were upper and middle-class women that could afford the $100-$125 procedure. Although, the term "family" does not specifically state the perspective of the woman. Lastly, it is important to recognize that sterilization was a choice that was made in the setting of a few or no alternatives. As mentioned earlier, sterilization was the most promoted and harmful form of contraception in Puerto Rico.

Due to a lack of educational materials distributed in Puerto Rico, many women had misconceptions about tubal ligations. For example, one common misconception about sterilization is that the procedure is not permanent. A 1968 study reported that over one-third of Puerto Rican women was not aware that tubal ligation was permanent or irreversible. Some doctors did not even request consent while other doctors threatened to not deliver the baby right before delivery unless the mother consented to sterilization after birth. If mothers were receiving government assistance, many Puerto Rican women were threatened to have their welfare terminated.

Additionally, the U.S. government and institutions worked collaboratively to incentivize sterilizations. Many doctors and hospital administrators began to encourage sterilizations due to the fact that the Joint Committee for Hospital Accreditation refused to accredited hospitals in Puerto Rico “unless a ten percent limit of sterilization (in proportion to all hospital deliveries) was agreed upon”. In the 1930’s, Puerto Rican women began to occupy jobs within factories. The women working in these factories felt an immense amount of pressure to undergo a sterilization to prove to employers that their pregnancy would not deter them from completing their job. This same year, approximately three sugar plantations housed birth control clinics and discriminated against women that were not sterilized as they refused employment to women who would not get the procedure. Puerto Rican women on sugar plantations were discriminated against while others were incentivized to alter their reproductive capacity to become the ideal responsible and dependable female worker.

Coercive strategies experienced in the delivery room and at work, were also entrenched in the process of clinical trials for birth control pills in 1955. These trials took place in poor areas in Puerto Rico like San Juan. Outside of San Juan, the Common Wealth Health Department controlled more than 19 free clinics. These clinics were reported to be operating at full capacity as approximately 1,000 sterilizations were completed a month. Within these clinics, low socioeconomic women were unknowingly being used as test subjects. Class inequality was apparent during these trials due to educated middle class women fearing the side effects and refusing to try the new medication while poor-less educated women unknowingly became test subjects out of desperation to avoid pregnancy and ultimately sterilization. On many occurrences, these pills such as Enovid, contained an unusually high quantity of hormones compared to 21st century birth control pills. Doctors disregarded women that reported nausea, blood clotting, and depression. Three women allegedly died during the underground testing of this pill, but their deaths were never put to trial or investigated. In the mainland, testing for this pill, Enovid, continued and was approved in 1957 regardless of dangerous and adverse side effects. Additionally, poor Puerto Rican women in Ryder Memorial Hospital were tested on for 6 different variations of birth control along with the IUD i n the 1960’s. These same women were also subject to extremely long and extensive interviews so that the Population Council's International Population Program could document their marital and fertility histories. This same secrecy and oppression was experienced by Puerto Rican women as they were unknowingly being tested for the Depo Privera shot and contraceptive foam. Once the implications of sterilizations became more widely known, many women opted to other forms of contraception during the dangerous phases of development to avoid the permanent procedure.

Law 116
In 1937, Law 116 legalized sterilization in Puerto Rico. This law placed Eugenics Boards within 32 states that oversaw compulsory sterilizations. More specifically, the Puerto Rican Eugenics Boards reviewed and confirmed petitions from the government and private entities to inflict sterilizations amongst the perceived “insane”, “feeble minded”, “diseased”, and “dependent”. The purpose of the Puerto Rican Eugenics Board was to regulate the reproductive capacities of "socially inferior" and perceived undesirable Puerto Ricans. This led the Puerto Rican Eugenics Board to approve 97 sterilizations before it was dissolved. Additionally, a large purpose of Law 116 was to further the science of eugenics and incite economic growth.

Law 116 was the result of an increase of curiosity and political support for the science of eugenics. It was legitimized by the belief that Puerto Rico was a failing economy that consisted of “unfit” people that should be addressed by decreasing the population density through the means of forced sterilizations. Therefore, population control programs became institutionalized as well as federally subsidized. Funds from both the U.S. government and private investors enabled the last eugenics sterilization law passed under United States territorial jurisdiction. It also legalized state-mandated and forced sterilizations, which further exploited Puerto Ricans.