Stop Forced Sterilization

The other side of struggle for legal abortion was, and is, the struggle against forced sterilization. That was a reality for African American women in the South, Puerto Rican and Native American women, and women of any race on public assistance.

During the 1970s, unauthorized sterilizations among Mexican women with minimal English rose at the Los Angeles County Medical Center. In 1978, partly in response to a class action suit, the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare created the Federal Sterilization Regulations to prohibit practices that forced or coerced women into sterilization.

For IWD; March 8, 1978