White Feminism Downplayed California’s Coerced Sterilization of Latinas in the ’70s
In the early 1970s, as feminists advocated for abortion rights in the lead-up to Roe v. Wade, an L.A. county hospital was years into a federally funded population-control program that targeted poor Mexican American women for sterilization when they came to the hospital to give birth. Several only learned years later that they’d had tubal ligations without their consent; 10 testified against the …