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Great Wall Institute: The Process of the Great Wall of Los Angeles

“Más Bebés?”: An Investigation of the Sterilization of Mexican-American Women at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center during the 1960s and 70s

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1. 1960s and 70s - No Más Bebés: Forced Sterilization They came to have their babies. They went home sterilized. The story of immigrant mothers who sued county doctors, the state, and the U.S. government after they were pushed into sterilizations while giving birth at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center during the 1960s and 70s. Led by an intrepid, 26-year-old Chicana lawyer and armed with hospital records secretly gathered by a whistle-blowing young doctor, the mothers faced public exposure and stood up to powerful institutions in the name of justice.
2. 1960s Puerto Rican Women Sterilized as a "solution to poverty"
3. 1960s Reproductive Justice for Latinas: Coerced, Forced, and Involuntary Sterilization By 1934, there were 67 birth control clinics operating under federal funding through Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Puerto Rican Relief Administration; in 1936, the Maternal and Childcare Health Association, a private entity, opened 23 more. A law passed the following year—Law 116—made sterilization legal and free for Puerto Rican women. Family planning clinics offering free sterilization were installed in the new factories of the industrial wave; women were encouraged to work in needlework and textile industries there, and were shown favoritism for sterilization compliance. Health officials campaigned door-to-door for sterilization throughout rural communities, too. In a dire economic situation and with few affordable alternative contraceptive methods available, the operation—or la operacion, as it was referred to locally—became commonplace. By the 1960s, about one-third of the female population had been sterilized—and many of those women hadn’t been educated about the permanency of tubal ligation.
4. 1960s - 1970s Uninformed Consent to Sterilization - Latina Women in targeted in East LA
5. 1960s A doctor at Los Angeles Community Hospital during the 1970s contested the notion that they targeted the Mexican community for sterilizations. Maria Figueroa returns to the maternity ward at Los Angeles county hospital. Her story is part of the PBS documentary “No Más Bebés.”Kevin Castro/In this case, the lack of similar efforts to conduct sterilizations in other hospitals underlines the racist sentiments in these forced surgeries. Specifically, in the Los Angeles region, only east LA and LA Community Hospital performed these operations and received such pushback. In other words, the only community that suffered due to uninformed and nonconsensual sterilization was east LA, a predominantly Mexican community. Furthermore, the tactic of asking non-English speakers to sign a form in English in most cases applied to the Mexican community in Los Angeles. A common argument given by doctors is that nothing they did shows they specifically targeted the Mexican community. Nevertheless, the standard operating procedures implemented at the hospital included asking patients to sign forms while under labor, not translating forms into Spanish for Spanish speakers, and overall not ensuring the informed consent at the time of signage. Combined, the doctors’ lack of concern for their patients and systematic targeting of patients while under labor and with English forms is understood to be forced sterilization. Regardless of original intention, be it money due to extra surgeries or increased prestige due to more successful surgeries completed, these doctors ultimately forcibly sterilized hundreds of women from a minority group, terminating their chances for reproduction and raising a family; they were able to do so primarily due to the race of their victims.
6. La Operación - The Subversion and Portrayal of Female Agency in Latinx Reproductive Rights Widespread sterilization operation led by the United States during the 1950s and 60s in Puerto Rico. La Operación is a documentary from 1982 that shows the widespread sterilization operation led by the United States during the 1950s and 60s in Puerto Rico. Ana María García directed the film which highlights how the United States pushed for increased female sterilization in Puerto Rico. She mixes in the documentary a blend of interviews with women from different socioeconomic and racial backgrounds but the interviews are not the only focus of her work; she also incorporates scenes showing a sterilization procedure in addition to other historical and contextual parts. account from the documentary displays the same message as the propaganda above, that there are prosperity and good living associated with sterilization, based on the belief that too many kids lead to a perpetual state of destitution. These false beliefs led many women to give up their agency over their bodies and cave into getting sterilized—except they did not know all the time what they were signing up for.
7. 1964 Forced sterilization policies in the US targeted minorities and those with disabilities – and lasted into the 21st century In August 1964, the North Carolina Eugenics Board met to decide if a 20-year-old Black woman should be sterilized. Because her name was redacted from the records, we call her Bertha. She was a single mother with one child who lived at the segregated O'Berry Center for African American adults with intellectual disabilities in Goldsboro. According to the North Carolina Eugenics Board, Bertha had an IQ of 62 and exhibited “aggressive behavior and sexual promiscuity.” She had been orphaned as a child and had a limited education. Likely because of her “low IQ score,” the board determined she was not capable of rehabilitation. Instead the board recommended the “protection of sterilization” for Bertha, because she was “feebleminded” and deemed unable to “assume responsibility for herself” or her child. Without her input, Bertha’s guardian signed the sterilization form.
8. 1970s L.A. Mexican Moms' Involuntary Sterilizations Maria Figueroa returns to the maternity ward at Los Angeles county hospital. Her story is part of the PBS documentary “No Más Bebés.”Kevin Castro -"During the late 1960s and early 1970s, some Mexican and Mexican-American women who were admitted to Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center for an emergency caesarian faced an agonizing choice. If they wanted painkillers, or if they wanted to proceed with their operations, then they had to sign a piece of paper that a nurse or doctor thrust into their hands. “You better sign those papers, or your baby probably could die,” one woman recalls being told in Spanish. Many women gave their signature, on what they believed to be standard paperwork, despite feeling bewildered or disoriented, being in severe pain, or not understanding English. Only later did they learn that they had consented to a tubal ligation – sterilization – more commonly known as having their “tubes tied.” Those children that they had delivered at the hospital would be their last. For them, there would be no more babies, or as one woman put it in Spanish, No Más Bebés. Under California eugenics laws that were in place between 1909 and 1979, about 20,000 women — mostly Black, Latinx and Indigenous women who were incarcerated or in state institutions for disabilities — were forcibly sterilized or coerced into sterilization."
9. Panel Discussion of "No Más Bebés" Documentary No Más Bebés tells the story of a little-known but landmark event in reproductive justice, when a small group of Mexican immigrant women sued county doctors, the state, and the U.S. government after they were sterilized while giving birth at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Marginalized and fearful, many of these mothers spoke no English, and charged that they had been coerced into tubal ligation — having their tubes tied — by doctors during the late stages of labor. Often the procedure was performed after asking the mothers under duress.
10. “Más Bebés?”: An Investigation of the Sterilization of Mexican-American Women at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center during the 1960s and 70s
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3. 1960s Health fair at Castelar Elementary School The Movement suffered from misogyny and homophobia. Though perhaps less so than other Third World left groups (e.g. there were fewer instances of physical abuse and assault), women and queer-identified people fought for presence, voice, and their issues. At the same time, the analysis of a “triple oppression” of class, race, and gender for women, and the creation of a multiracial LGBT identity, opened a profound reworking of patriarchal and heterosexual norms. These movements within the Movement are crucial not only to appraising the Asian American Movement, but offer vital case studies for our intersectional present.
4. 1960s Welfare Activism Activists marching under the NWRO banner in the Poor People’s Campaign, Washington, D.C., May–June 1968. 1960s/70s Welfare activists were mostly working-class black and some white mothers, and the majority of them were themselves welfare recipients. As welfare recipients, women of color, and working-class people, they faced a wave of policies and ideologies that stigmatized them, policed their behavior, and made receiving benefits increasingly difficult. These policies were but one element of a larger political crisis, wherein the California government stoked racialized and gendered fears in order to shrink the welfare state. Rather than simply acquiesce to this reality, welfare-rights groups in California refused to accept it. In 1963, Johnnie Tillmon—a black single mother on welfare—decided to get in touch with fellow welfare recipients in Los Angeles. She was tired of enduring the stigma that came with being on welfare—and she did not want to endure it alone. She envisioned a group of welfare recipients that would support one another, exchange advice, and even pressure the California government for policy changes. In putting this group together, the first step was to find out who else was on welfare, or Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). “That was a hard job”, said Tillmon, “because that kind of information was not made public. We were in the housing project manager’s office one day when he was called to the phone. Instead of taking the call in his office, he took it from outside. While he was out, we started looking through the papers on his desk.” Among those papers was a list of neighborhood welfare recipients, and Tillmon “copied the names”. Soon after, she went door-to-door, spoke with neighbors in her housing project, and a group of welfare recipients began to form. This group came to be called Aid to Needy Children-Mothers Anonymous ([1], p. 18), or ANC-MA: one of many local welfare-rights groups across the country.
5. 1960s/1970s GIDRA sisters
6. 1963 The Feminine Mystique Published
7. 1960s/1970s Health Fair at Castelar Elementary The Movement suffered from misogyny and homophobia. Though perhaps less so than other Third World left groups (e.g. there were fewer instances of physical abuse and assault), women and queer-identified people fought for presence, voice, and their issues. At the same time, the analysis of a “triple oppression” of class, race, and gender for women, and the creation of a multiracial LGBT identity, opened a profound reworking of patriarchal and heterosexual norms. These movements within the Movement are crucial not only to appraising the Asian American Movement, but offer vital case studies for our intersectional present.
8. 1968 National Welfare Rights Organization Marchers, 1968. This photograph and these pins highlight the welfare rights movement, which emerged in the 1960s at the intersection of the black freedom movement, women’s liberation, and anti-poverty activism. Many participants were single women of color, and they fought against punitive social policies that prioritized paid labor over caregiving responsibilities and tied the receipt of public benefits to increased surveillance of their families. Fighting for the means to provide for their families and juggling the demands of work, childcare, and activism, these women offered an expansive vision of citizenship that remains unfulfilled to this day. ( Jeanne Gardner Gutierrez, Curatorial Scholar in Women’s History )Jack Rottier Photograph Collection, Special Collections Research Center, George Mason University
9. 1970 Asian American Women's Movement Activists Although not widely known outside the Asian community or among feminist activists and scholars outside of the Los Angeles area, there was a thriving, militant Asian American women's movement in southern California starting in the late 1960s/early 1970s. Like other movements among feminists of color, it both grew out of and remained tied to the larger national/ethnic movement and the anti-war movement. Asian American consciousness and activism most often developed on college campuses and, ultimately, often led to the development of Asian American studies. The core women activists in the Los Angeles area, however, focused most of their political work and organizing in grass roots community programs, and looked to Chinese and Vietnamese women revolutionaries for their inspiration. Many of them were members of the Community Workers Collective, which engaged in studying political liberation movements in other countries as a basis for their community organizing. Based on their study and organizing experience, the Asian Women's Group developed one of the first multi-media interactive presentations on the Asian women's movement which was performed at venues along the West Coast. They also founded the first Asian Women's Center in the US, establishing principles of unity to guide their programs; and collectivized their salaries to generate more staff and programs. They collaborated in anti-Vietnam War activities, and used their resources to support other struggles such as Wounded Knee. Despite ongoing struggles with the men in the larger Asian American movement, these women activists remained committed to and involved in the broader movement and eschewed separatism. The Asian American activists included in this series include: May Ying Chen, Miya Iwataki and Evelyn Yoshimura. An additional interview with long-time Asian American male activist, Alan Nishio, sheds further light both on the activities of the women and on the relationship between them and the broader Asian American movement in Los Angeles.
10. Chicana Feminists Chicana feminists in Southern California engaged in a range of groups and activities, both on college campuses and in their communities - often both. Regardless of the specifics of their politics or focus, most were initially politicized in the Chicano movement of the late 1960s; and most developed their feminist consciousness as a result of their direct experience with sexism in that movement. The six individual narrators in this series reflect this common background. The four activists in Hijas de Cuauhtemoc (Anna NietoGomez, Corinne Sanchez, Leticia Hernandez and Sylvia Castillo) cut their political eye teeth in the Chicano student group, UMAS/MEChA, at CSULB. In fact, it was their experiences in MEChA that motivated them to form the Hijas group (which published a newspaper by the same name). They were also involved in community groups and continued this activism after they left college, particularly in the Chicana Service Action Center. Yolanda Nava , who was one of the founding members of Comision Femenil Mexicana (CFM) and later served a term as president, was also introduced to the Chicano movement through MEChA. Although more than a decade older than these activists, Consuelo Nieto had similar experiences with sexism. Her introduction to the Chicano movement came while she was teaching in the schools in ELA, where high school students had organized to demand better education. A word about language in this series: While the term Anglo came to be used later, during the heyday of the Chicana feminist movement - and particularly in the debate and conflict with those who excoriated the feminists - White was the term most often used. In their interviews, the women themselves used the term White. It should also be noted that Cuauhtemoc is sometimes spelled "Cuahtemoc." NOTE: The interviews with the founders and former members of Hijas de Cuauhtemoc were conducted by Maylei Blackwell for what became her larger research project. As a courtesy to her, the audio recordings of these interviews will not be available until 2006. Until then, they can be used on-site at CSULB with her permission. See also her essay, "Contested histories: las hijas de Cuauhtâemoc, Chicana feminisms, and print culture in the Chicano movement, 1968-1973" in Gabriela Arredondo et al., Chicana Feminisms: A Critical Reader (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003) and the response by Anna NietoGomez. See also the writings of Anna NietoGomez, and other femenista pioneers in Alma Garcia, ed., Chicana Feminist Thought: Basic Historical Writings. New York: Routledge, 1997.
11. Feminist Health Movement From its earliest days in the 1960s, the women's liberation movement focused on abortion and women's right to control their bodies. Some of the more radical groups engaged in underground abortion clinics, most notably in Chicago; others, like the Boston's Women's Health Collective began writing/publishing projects; and organizations like NOW formed Task Forces to work on the issue of reproductive rights. In fact, it was in NOW that leaders of the feminist health movement, Carol Downer and Lorraine Rothman, first became active and initially demonstrated gynecological self-examination. And while Downer and Rothman went on to open the first Feminist Women's Health Center at the Crenshaw Women's Center, other women, like Vi Verreaux worked at and opened more conventionally structured, service-oriented clinics for women. This series is comprised of interviews with these three women. The long interviews with Downer and Rothman document the evolution and expansion of their work, and although the much shorter interview with Verreaux barely touches on her clinic work, it does provides a glimpse into a service-oriented, community-based clinic.
12. 1960 Birth Control Pill tested on Puerto Rican Women
14. 1960 - 1980 Women's Liberation Movement While some 1960s/1970s women's movements in Los Angeles were inextricably linked to ethnic or national communities and movements, many White Anglo women from different communities came together to participate in groups that, taken together, was often referred to as "the women's liberation movement." These groups ranged from chapters of a national organization like NOW - usually characterized as a liberal feminist group - to smaller radical groups of anarcha-feminists, lesbian feminists and radical feminists. In Los Angeles, many of these groups were spawned at the Crenshaw Women's Center (CWC), where NOW also participated initially. After the center closed in 1972, many of these groups operated out of the Westside Women's Center (WWC), where Sister monthly newspaper continued to be published. This series is by no means comprehensive or inclusive, but rather includes interviews with a few of the women who were key players in some of these Los Angeles feminist groups and/or institutions. Toni Carabillo was the force behind Los Angeles NOW during its infancy and later became a national leader in the organization as well. Joan Robins was one of the main forces behind the founding of the Crenshaw Women's Center, and Nancy (aka Dara) Robinson became active at the Center from the start. With Robins, Robinson began the Center Newsletter, which eventually became Sister newspaper. She was also instrumental in the formation of Lesbian Feminists. Originally active in the Lesbian Feminists at the Crenshaw Women's Center, Jeanne Cordova went on to start the monthly magazine, Lesbian Tide. Sherna Gluck, on the other hand, became active at the Westside Women's Center, where she also initiated the Feminist History Research Project. Carabillo, Gluck, Robins and Robinson were first interviewed in 1984 as part of a project initiated by Women Rising, a group to which the latter three belonged. Four years later, all of them except Robinson, were interviewed in conjunction with an Honors Thesis project of Michelle Moravec at UCLA. Cordova was also interviewed by her. In addition to these generally longer, life history interviews, this series includes both shorter interviews and other audio materials, including an interview with Lilyan Frank about her experience at the UN Conference in Mexico City; interviews with Bernadette Carmier, Consuelo Nieto, and Priscilla Oaks, taken at or shortly after the 1977 Houston IWY Conference; and a panel discussion by Los Angeles women who attended the conference. Although the audio quality of the 1983 Women's History Day speak-out organized by the Women Rising Collective is poor, it has also been incorporated into the series because it provides a glimpse of the range of activities of the Los Angeles women's movement dating back to the late 1960s/early 1970s.
15. “Más Bebés?”: An Investigation of the Sterilization of Mexican-American Women at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center during the 1960s and 70s
16. Panel Discussion of "No Más Bebés" Documentary No Más Bebés tells the story of a little-known but landmark event in reproductive justice, when a small group of Mexican immigrant women sued county doctors, the state, and the U.S. government after they were sterilized while giving birth at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Marginalized and fearful, many of these mothers spoke no English, and charged that they had been coerced into tubal ligation — having their tubes tied — by doctors during the late stages of labor. Often the procedure was performed after asking the mothers under duress.
17. 1960s Reproductive Justice for Latinas: Coerced, Forced, and Involuntary Sterilization By 1934, there were 67 birth control clinics operating under federal funding through Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Puerto Rican Relief Administration; in 1936, the Maternal and Childcare Health Association, a private entity, opened 23 more. A law passed the following year—Law 116—made sterilization legal and free for Puerto Rican women. Family planning clinics offering free sterilization were installed in the new factories of the industrial wave; women were encouraged to work in needlework and textile industries there, and were shown favoritism for sterilization compliance. Health officials campaigned door-to-door for sterilization throughout rural communities, too. In a dire economic situation and with few affordable alternative contraceptive methods available, the operation—or la operacion, as it was referred to locally—became commonplace. By the 1960s, about one-third of the female population had been sterilized—and many of those women hadn’t been educated about the permanency of tubal ligation.
18. 1967 President Johnson amended Executive Order 11246, which dealt with affirmative action, to include sex discrimination on the list of prohibited employment discrimination. The Origin of Affirmative Action Programs Former U.S. President John F. Kennedy used the phrase “affirmative action” in 1961. In an executive order, President Kennedy required federal contractors to “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed…without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson issued an order that used the same language to call for nondiscrimination in government employment. FEATURED VIDEO Hate Your Job? 5 Problems That Are in Every Workplace It was not until 1967 that President Johnson addressed sex discrimination. He issued another executive order on October 13, 1967. It expanded his previous order and required the government’s equal opportunity programs to “expressly embrace discrimination on account of sex” as they worked toward equality. The Need for Affirmative Action The legislation of the 1960s was part of a larger climate of seeking equality and justice for all members of society. Segregation had been legal for decades after the end of enslavement. President Johnson argued for affirmative action: if two men were running a race, he said, but one had his legs bound together in shackles, they could not achieve a fair result by simply removing the shackles. Instead, the man who had been in chains should be allowed to make up the missing yards from the time he was bound. If striking down segregation laws could not instantly solve the problem, then positive steps of affirmative action could be used to achieve what President Johnson called “equality of result.” Some opponents of affirmative action saw it as a “quota” system that unfairly demanded a certain number of minority candidates be hired no matter how qualified the competing White male candidate was. Affirmative action brought up different issues concerning women in the workplace. There was little protest of women in traditional “women’s jobs”—secretaries, nurses, elementary school teachers, etc. As more women began to work in jobs that had not been traditional women’s jobs, there was an outcry that giving a job to a woman over a qualified male candidate would be “taking” the job from the man. The men needed the job, was the argument, but the women did not need to work. In her 1979 essay “The Importance of Work,” Gloria Steinem rejected the notion that women should not work if they do not “have to." She pointed out the double standard that employers never ask men with children at home if they need the job for which they are applying. She also argued that many women do, in fact, “need” their jobs. Work is a human right, not a male right, she wrote, and she criticized the false argument that independence for women is a luxury.
19. 1960s - 1970s Uninformed Consent to Sterilization - Latina Women in targeted in East LA
20. 1960s Puerto Rican Women Sterilized as a "solution to poverty"
21. 1966 The National Organization for Women, known as NOW, was founded. On October 29, 1966, the Nation Organization for Women officially adopted their Statement of Purpose. The statement, written by Betty Friedan and Pauli Murray, expressed the organization’s main goals in addressing and fighting the unequal treatment of women in society. This 1966 document is a seminal part of the modern women’s rights movement and played an important role in inspiring more Americans to fight for gender equality. Although their Statement of Purpose was adopted in October, the feminist organization was officially founded on June 30, 1966. The statement described NOW’s purpose as “To take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men.” NOW was created when its founders recognized that women needed a pressure group to combat gender discrimination, as the government agencies and recent laws to address this problem had proven ineffective. A prime example of this was the failure of the Equality Employment Opportunity Commission to enforce Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (Title VII is a federal law that prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin, and religion.) Employers were still discriminating against women in hiring practices and there was unequal pay for women. Secondly, NOW was also influenced by the failure of John F. Kennedy’s 1961 President’s Commission on the Status of Women, headed by Eleanor Roosevelt, to end discrimination against females in education, the workforce and Social Security. The movement was also inspired by Friedan’s 1963 book “The Feminine Mystique,” where she famously expresses her stultifying experiences as a housewife lacking other options in society beyond that domestic role. The founders of NOW hoped that their organization would help women combat discrimination in all aspects of society by lobbying and holding rallies, marches and conferences. NOW broke with previous trends for women’s organizations by including the concerns of black women in their mission. NOW has advocated for many issues they see as necessary for ensuring equality for women, including maternity leave rights in employment, child day care centers, equal job training opportunities, reproductive rights, and the prohibition of sex discrimination in the workplace.
22. 1966 The National Welfare Rights Organization “I’m a woman. I’m a Black woman. I’m a poor woman. I’m a fat woman. I’m a middle-aged woman. And I’m on welfare,” Tillmon writes in her landmark 1972 essay, “Welfare is a Women’s Issue,” published in Ms. magazine. “In this country, if you’re any of those things you count less as a human being. If you’re all of those things, you don’t count at all.” In 1966—three years after ANC-MA’s founding—welfare recipients built a national group: the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO). The NWRO used lobbying and direct action to pursue a three-pronged agenda: a “guaranteed annual income”, an increase in “availability of welfare benefits and services”, and improved “access to consumer credit ([3], p. 301).” Johnnie Tillmon was selected to serve as the NWRO’s chair, bringing with her the knowledge and experience she had gained in California. Across California, welfare-rights activism grew organically: in living rooms and churches. It organized in direct opposition to the language and policies of Governor Ronald Reagan, the California legislature, bigoted social workers, and even middle-class black and feminist communities. It formed local organizations, including Tillmon’s ANC-MA, the California Welfare Rights Organization (CWRO), and many others. I
23. 1969 Redstockings Abortion Speakout n 1969, the members of the radical feminist group Redstockings were furious that legislative hearings about abortion featured male speakers discussing such a crucial women's issue. They, therefore, staged their hearing, the Redstockings abortion speak-out, in New York City on March 21, 1969. The Fight to Make Abortion Legal The abortion speak-out took place during the pre-Roe v. Wade era when abortion was illegal in the United States. Each state had its own laws about reproductive matters. It was rare if not unheard of to hear any woman speak publicly about her experience with illegal abortion. FEATURED VIDEO Roe v. Wade Supported By 70% Of Americans Before the radical feminists' fight, the movement to change U.S. abortion laws was more focused on reforming existing laws than repealing them. Legislative hearings on the issue featured medical experts and others who wanted to finesse the exceptions to abortion prohibitions. These "experts" talked about cases of rape and incest or a threat to the life or health of a mother. Feminists shifted the debate to a discussion of a woman's right to choose what to do with her own body. Disruption In February of 1969, Redstockings members disrupted a New York legislative hearing about abortion. The New York Joint Legislature Committee on the Problems of Public Health had called the hearing to consider reforms to the New York law, then 86 years old, on abortion. They roundly condemned the hearing because the "experts" were a dozen men and a Catholic nun. Of all women to speak, they thought a nun would be the least likely to have contended with the abortion issue, other than from her possible religious bias. The Redstockings members shouted and called for the legislators to hear from women who had had abortions, instead. Eventually, that hearing had to be moved to another room behind closed doors. Women Raising Their Voices The members of Redstockings had previously participated in consciousness-raising discussions. They had also drawn attention to women's issues with protests and demonstrations. Several hundred people attended their abortion speak-out in the West Village on March 21, 1969. Some women spoke about what they suffered during illegal “back-alley abortions.” Other women spoke about being unable to get an abortion and having to carry a baby to term, then have the child taken away when it was adopted. Legacy After the Demonstration More abortion speak-outs followed in other U.S. cities, as well as speak-outs on other issues in the subsequent decade. Four years after the 1969 abortion speak-out, the Roe v. Wade decision altered the landscape by repealing most abortion laws then in effect and striking down restrictions on abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy. Susan Brownmiller attended the original 1969 abortion speak-out. Brownmiller then wrote about the event in an article for the "Village Voice", "Everywoman's Abortions: 'The Oppressor Is Man.'" The original Redstockings collective broke up in 1970, though other groups with that name continued to work on feminist issues. On March 3, 1989, another abortion speakout was held in New York City on the 20th anniversary of the first. Florynce Kennedy attended, saying "I crawled off my death bed to come down here" as she called for the struggle to continue.
24. The Crenshaw Women’s Center The CRENSHAW WOMEN’S CENTER was the first women’s center in Los Angeles and was a ground-breaking facility serving women in a variety of capacities. It housed the nation’s first women’s clinic, Women’s Self-Help One, and was the site of The Great Yogurt Conspiracy. In three action-packed years, the Crenshaw Women’s Center generated an enormous amount of energy, pivotal change, and several firsts for the Women’s Rights Movement and second-wave feminism in Los Angeles and the nation. A Historic-Cultural Monument (HCM) application was prepared and submitted to the city of Los Angeles by Kate Eggert and Krisy Gosney.
26. September 7, 1968: The "Miss America Protest" by New York Radical Women at the Miss America pageant brought widespread media attention to women's liberation. Fifty years ago—on September 7, 1968—more than 100 women launched a protest at the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City. The action made national headlines, announcing the arrival of a militant and creative new wave of feminist organizing. More than merely denouncing a single televised event, the protesters connected the pageant with the systemic problems of consumerism, racism, and war—as well as with the routine abuses and humiliations of patriarchy, to which nearly every women in the country could say, “Me too.” “Every day in a woman’s life,” one organizer argued shortly after the protest, “is a walking Miss America contest.”
27. The Mothers Who Fought To Radically Reimagine Welfare At its height, the National Welfare Rights Organization had more than 25,000 dues-paying members. Some people have called it "the largest black feminist organization in American history." Jack Rottier Collection/George Mason University Libraries “I'm a black woman. I'm a poor woman. I'm a fat woman. I'm a middle-aged woman. And I'm on welfare. In this country, if you're any one of those things you count less as a human being. If you're all those things, you don't count at all.” - Johnnie Tillmon
28. La Operación - The Subversion and Portrayal of Female Agency in Latinx Reproductive Rights Widespread sterilization operation led by the United States during the 1950s and 60s in Puerto Rico. La Operación is a documentary from 1982 that shows the widespread sterilization operation led by the United States during the 1950s and 60s in Puerto Rico. Ana María García directed the film which highlights how the United States pushed for increased female sterilization in Puerto Rico. She mixes in the documentary a blend of interviews with women from different socioeconomic and racial backgrounds but the interviews are not the only focus of her work; she also incorporates scenes showing a sterilization procedure in addition to other historical and contextual parts. account from the documentary displays the same message as the propaganda above, that there are prosperity and good living associated with sterilization, based on the belief that too many kids lead to a perpetual state of destitution. These false beliefs led many women to give up their agency over their bodies and cave into getting sterilized—except they did not know all the time what they were signing up for.
31. 1962 "Operation Weekend" - investigators launched surprise visits to the homes or welfare recipients - to ensure their behavior merited public aid. Beginning in 1962, Kern County of California, like many other counties across the nation, adopted a practice known as “Operation Weekend”: investigators, hired by social workers, would enter welfare recipients’ homes unexpectedly and at unusual hours to ensure their behavior merited public aid. After Kern took up Operation Weekend, other counties followed ([4], p. 29), and soon the practice of late-night raids became nearly statewide. Social workers claimed that the purpose of these raids was to ensure compliance with state and federal regulations. Such regulations, however, were simultaneously racialized, gendered, and classed. With each visit, recipients were forced to verify “their Humanities 2017, 6, 14 5 of 12 destitution, and, increasingly, their willingness but inability to work ([6], pp. 12–13)”. Unlike their white counterparts, women of color had long been pressured to work outside the home: only under extreme circumstances could they be exempted. Recipients were also forced to verify their single status. The raids all tended to take the same format: “One [investigator] was at the back door and one was at the front door. The knock came from the front door. You opened it and were supposed to let this party in from the back. They were looking for a man in your house in that time of night ([1], p. 17)!” In fact, social workers would often go to extreme lengths to ensure men were absent from the household. Tillmon explains that they would even “pull things out of the washing machine [19]” to check for men’s clothes. In this way, aid was intended as a placeholder for a male breadwinner. If a woman had both a male partner and a welfare contract, this compromised her legitimacy as a welfare recipient. Operation Weekend and so-called “man-in-the-house rules” reinforced the common political trope of the absent black father—and in the process, they cast single motherhood as deviant.
32. 1963 Welfare Mother's Movement The welfare mothers movement in Los Angeles can be traced to 1963 and the founding of the ANC Mothers Anonymous of Watts. Initially it had little connection with the larger women's movement, and its members did not view themselves as part of that movement. Later, after the formation of the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), and especially after Johnnie Tillmon took the helm of the national organization, this changed. The turning point might well have been the publication of her 1972 Ms Magazine article, "Welfare is a Woman's Issue." By 1979 and the International Women's Conference in Houston, women of color and poor women had become a visible presence in the larger women's movement (which ranged from reformist groups like NOW to radical feminists) and were making their voices heard and their issues public. At the present time, there is only one interview included in the "Welfare Mothers" series: the oral history of Johnnie Tillmon, one of the founders and leaders of the ANC Mothers Anonymous of Watts. Hopefully, an oral history of Ardelphia Hickey, another key person in the ANC mothers group, might be conducted eventually. It should also be noted that Alicia Escalante, the founder of the ELA Welfare Rights group (later named Chicana Welfare Rights Organization) was interviewed for a Ph.D. dissertation at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Contents of this path:
1. 1966 The National Organization for Women, known as NOW, was founded. On October 29, 1966, the Nation Organization for Women officially adopted their Statement of Purpose. The statement, written by Betty Friedan and Pauli Murray, expressed the organization’s main goals in addressing and fighting the unequal treatment of women in society. This 1966 document is a seminal part of the modern women’s rights movement and played an important role in inspiring more Americans to fight for gender equality. Although their Statement of Purpose was adopted in October, the feminist organization was officially founded on June 30, 1966. The statement described NOW’s purpose as “To take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men.” NOW was created when its founders recognized that women needed a pressure group to combat gender discrimination, as the government agencies and recent laws to address this problem had proven ineffective. A prime example of this was the failure of the Equality Employment Opportunity Commission to enforce Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (Title VII is a federal law that prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin, and religion.) Employers were still discriminating against women in hiring practices and there was unequal pay for women. Secondly, NOW was also influenced by the failure of John F. Kennedy’s 1961 President’s Commission on the Status of Women, headed by Eleanor Roosevelt, to end discrimination against females in education, the workforce and Social Security. The movement was also inspired by Friedan’s 1963 book “The Feminine Mystique,” where she famously expresses her stultifying experiences as a housewife lacking other options in society beyond that domestic role. The founders of NOW hoped that their organization would help women combat discrimination in all aspects of society by lobbying and holding rallies, marches and conferences. NOW broke with previous trends for women’s organizations by including the concerns of black women in their mission. NOW has advocated for many issues they see as necessary for ensuring equality for women, including maternity leave rights in employment, child day care centers, equal job training opportunities, reproductive rights, and the prohibition of sex discrimination in the workplace.
2. La Operación - The Subversion and Portrayal of Female Agency in Latinx Reproductive Rights Widespread sterilization operation led by the United States during the 1950s and 60s in Puerto Rico. La Operación is a documentary from 1982 that shows the widespread sterilization operation led by the United States during the 1950s and 60s in Puerto Rico. Ana María García directed the film which highlights how the United States pushed for increased female sterilization in Puerto Rico. She mixes in the documentary a blend of interviews with women from different socioeconomic and racial backgrounds but the interviews are not the only focus of her work; she also incorporates scenes showing a sterilization procedure in addition to other historical and contextual parts. account from the documentary displays the same message as the propaganda above, that there are prosperity and good living associated with sterilization, based on the belief that too many kids lead to a perpetual state of destitution. These false beliefs led many women to give up their agency over their bodies and cave into getting sterilized—except they did not know all the time what they were signing up for.
3. 1960s Reproductive Justice for Latinas: Coerced, Forced, and Involuntary Sterilization By 1934, there were 67 birth control clinics operating under federal funding through Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Puerto Rican Relief Administration; in 1936, the Maternal and Childcare Health Association, a private entity, opened 23 more. A law passed the following year—Law 116—made sterilization legal and free for Puerto Rican women. Family planning clinics offering free sterilization were installed in the new factories of the industrial wave; women were encouraged to work in needlework and textile industries there, and were shown favoritism for sterilization compliance. Health officials campaigned door-to-door for sterilization throughout rural communities, too. In a dire economic situation and with few affordable alternative contraceptive methods available, the operation—or la operacion, as it was referred to locally—became commonplace. By the 1960s, about one-third of the female population had been sterilized—and many of those women hadn’t been educated about the permanency of tubal ligation.
4. 1960s Puerto Rican Women Sterilized as a "solution to poverty"
5. 1969 Redstockings Abortion Speakout n 1969, the members of the radical feminist group Redstockings were furious that legislative hearings about abortion featured male speakers discussing such a crucial women's issue. They, therefore, staged their hearing, the Redstockings abortion speak-out, in New York City on March 21, 1969. The Fight to Make Abortion Legal The abortion speak-out took place during the pre-Roe v. Wade era when abortion was illegal in the United States. Each state had its own laws about reproductive matters. It was rare if not unheard of to hear any woman speak publicly about her experience with illegal abortion. FEATURED VIDEO Roe v. Wade Supported By 70% Of Americans Before the radical feminists' fight, the movement to change U.S. abortion laws was more focused on reforming existing laws than repealing them. Legislative hearings on the issue featured medical experts and others who wanted to finesse the exceptions to abortion prohibitions. These "experts" talked about cases of rape and incest or a threat to the life or health of a mother. Feminists shifted the debate to a discussion of a woman's right to choose what to do with her own body. Disruption In February of 1969, Redstockings members disrupted a New York legislative hearing about abortion. The New York Joint Legislature Committee on the Problems of Public Health had called the hearing to consider reforms to the New York law, then 86 years old, on abortion. They roundly condemned the hearing because the "experts" were a dozen men and a Catholic nun. Of all women to speak, they thought a nun would be the least likely to have contended with the abortion issue, other than from her possible religious bias. The Redstockings members shouted and called for the legislators to hear from women who had had abortions, instead. Eventually, that hearing had to be moved to another room behind closed doors. Women Raising Their Voices The members of Redstockings had previously participated in consciousness-raising discussions. They had also drawn attention to women's issues with protests and demonstrations. Several hundred people attended their abortion speak-out in the West Village on March 21, 1969. Some women spoke about what they suffered during illegal “back-alley abortions.” Other women spoke about being unable to get an abortion and having to carry a baby to term, then have the child taken away when it was adopted. Legacy After the Demonstration More abortion speak-outs followed in other U.S. cities, as well as speak-outs on other issues in the subsequent decade. Four years after the 1969 abortion speak-out, the Roe v. Wade decision altered the landscape by repealing most abortion laws then in effect and striking down restrictions on abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy. Susan Brownmiller attended the original 1969 abortion speak-out. Brownmiller then wrote about the event in an article for the "Village Voice", "Everywoman's Abortions: 'The Oppressor Is Man.'" The original Redstockings collective broke up in 1970, though other groups with that name continued to work on feminist issues. On March 3, 1989, another abortion speakout was held in New York City on the 20th anniversary of the first. Florynce Kennedy attended, saying "I crawled off my death bed to come down here" as she called for the struggle to continue.
7. Feminist Health Movement From its earliest days in the 1960s, the women's liberation movement focused on abortion and women's right to control their bodies. Some of the more radical groups engaged in underground abortion clinics, most notably in Chicago; others, like the Boston's Women's Health Collective began writing/publishing projects; and organizations like NOW formed Task Forces to work on the issue of reproductive rights. In fact, it was in NOW that leaders of the feminist health movement, Carol Downer and Lorraine Rothman, first became active and initially demonstrated gynecological self-examination. And while Downer and Rothman went on to open the first Feminist Women's Health Center at the Crenshaw Women's Center, other women, like Vi Verreaux worked at and opened more conventionally structured, service-oriented clinics for women. This series is comprised of interviews with these three women. The long interviews with Downer and Rothman document the evolution and expansion of their work, and although the much shorter interview with Verreaux barely touches on her clinic work, it does provides a glimpse into a service-oriented, community-based clinic.
8. The Racist History of Abortion and Midwifery Bans https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/the-racist-history-of-abortion-and-midwifery-bans. Today’s attacks on abortion access have a long history rooted in white supremacy. Following the Supreme Court’s decision in June Medical Services v. Russo this week, it is worth reflecting on the racist origins of the anti-abortion movement in the United States, which date back to the ideologies of slavery. Just like slavery, anti-abortion efforts are rooted in white supremacy, the exploitation of Black women, and placing women’s bodies in service to men. Just like slavery, maximizing wealth and consolidating power motivated the anti-abortion enterprise. Then, just as now, anti-abortion efforts have nothing to do with saving women’s lives or protecting the interests of children. Today, a person is 14 times more likely to die by carrying a pregnancy to term than by having an abortion, and medical evidence has shown for decades that an abortion is as safe as a penicillin shot—and yet abortion remains heavily restricted in states across the country. Prior to the Civil War, abortion and contraceptives were legal in the U.S., used by Indigenous women as well as those who sailed to these lands from Europe. For the most part, the persons who performed all manner of reproductive health care were women — female midwives. Midwifery was interracial; half of the women who provided reproductive health care were Black women. Other midwives were Indigenous and white. However, in the wake of slavery’s end, skilled Black midwives represented both real competition for white men who sought to enter the practice of child delivery, and a threat to how obstetricians viewed themselves. Male gynecologists claimed midwifery was a degrading means of obstetrical care. They viewed themselves as elite members of a trained profession with tools such as forceps and other technologies, and the modern convenience of hospitals, which excluded Black and Indigenous women from practice within their institutions. History would later reveal that it was literally on the backs of Black women’s bodies that such tools were developed. Dr. Marion Sims famously wrote about his insomniac-induced “epiphanies” that stirred him to experiment on enslaved Black women, lacerating, suturing, and cutting, providing no anesthesia or pain relief. Only recently have the terrors that Black women endured through nonconsensual experimentation by gynecologists of the 19th and 20th centuries been acknowledged. Successful racist and misogynistic smear campaigns, cleverly designed for political persuasion and to achieve legal reform, described Black midwives as unhygienic, barbarous, ineffective, non-scientific, dangerous, and unprofessional. Dr. Joseph DeLee, a preeminent 20th century obstetrician and fervent opponent to midwifery, stated in a much-quoted 1915 speech, “Progress Toward Ideal Obstetrics”: The midwife is a relic of barbarism. In civilized countries the midwife is wrong, has always been wrong … The midwife has been a drag on the progress of the science and art of obstetrics. Her existence stunts the one and degrades the other. For many centuries she perverted obstetrics from obtaining any standing at all among the science of medicine … Even after midwifery was practiced by some of the most brilliant men in the profession, such practice was held opprobrious and degraded. At the root of these stereotypes were explicit efforts to destroy midwifery and promote white supremacy. As the surge of lynchings, “separate but equal” laws, police violence, and the decimation of successful Black communities during Jim Crow revealed, Black Americans post slavery suffered greatly due to white supremacy, as did Chinese and Japanese workers and their families. Indeed, the racist campaigns launched by doctors against Black midwives extended to anti-immigration legislative platforms targeted at Chinese and Japanese workers. The Page Act, which restricted Chinese women from entering the United States, is a part of this shameful legacy. This broader 20th century anti-Chinese campaign became known as “yellow peril.” DeLee and Horatio Storer urged white women to “spread their loins” across the nation, a dog whistle about the threat of too many Blacks and Asians in the U.S. Gynecologists explicitly revealed their motivations in undermining midwifery: They desired financial gains, recognition, and a monopoly. As Dr. DeLee wrote in a 1916 article published in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Disease of Women & Children, “There is high art in obstetrics and that it must pay as well for it as for surgery. I will not admit that this is a sordid impulse. It is only common justice to labor, self-sacrifice, and skill.” They believed that men should be paid, but not women — particularly not Black women. To better understand racial injustice in the anti-abortion movement, remember that American hospitals barred the admission of African Americans both in terms of practice and as patients. And, the American Medical Association (AMA) barred women and Black people from membership. The AMA, founded in 1847, refused to admit Black doctors, informing them, “You come from groups and schools that admit women and that admit irregular practitioners.” For this reason, Black doctors formed the National Medical Association in 1895. In 2008, the organization issued a public apology for its active campaigns to close Black medical schools, deny Blacks membership, and other efforts to marginalize Black patients and practitioners. Gynecologists pushed women out of the field of reproductive health by lobbying state legislatures to ban midwifery and prohibit abortions. Doing so not only undercut women’s reproductive health, but also drove qualified Black women out of medical services. For these groups, there was no meaningful path to the formalized skill set DeLee claimed necessary. Abortion was an expedient way to frame their campaign to create monopolies on women’s bodies for male doctors. The American Medical Association explicitly contributed to this cause through its exclusion of women and Black people. Today, as people debate whether anti-abortion platforms benefit Black women, the clear answer is no. The U.S. leads the developed world in maternal and infant mortality. The U.S. ranks around 50th in the world for maternal safety. Nationally, for Black women, the maternal death rate is nearly four times that of white women, and 10 to 17 times worse in some states. In the wake of both Whole Woman’s Health and June Medical Services v. Russo, keep in mind that both Texas and Louisiana, where these cases originated, are considered the deadliest in the developed world for a woman to give birth. Sadly, pregnancy has become a death sentence for many in the very places that make reproductive health care access the most fraught and hard to reach. Many of these states (though not all) are former slave states, such as Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas. As Black people in these states continue to fight for equal access the reproductive care they need, Sojourner Truth’s 1851 speech continues to resonate. And as the Supreme Court demonstrated this week, the fight for justice in reproductive health care and equality in abortion access is far from over. The decision does not advance the equality of poor Black women — it maintains all other burdensome restrictions already in place. We have much more work to do such that not only DeLee’s words, but also his racist and exploitative viewpoints, are relegated to history.
9. Panel Discussion of "No Más Bebés" Documentary No Más Bebés tells the story of a little-known but landmark event in reproductive justice, when a small group of Mexican immigrant women sued county doctors, the state, and the U.S. government after they were sterilized while giving birth at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Marginalized and fearful, many of these mothers spoke no English, and charged that they had been coerced into tubal ligation — having their tubes tied — by doctors during the late stages of labor. Often the procedure was performed after asking the mothers under duress.
11. 1962 Sherri Finkbine And The 50-Year Fight For Abortion In America Sherri Finkbine traveled to Sweden for an abortion after learning that Thalidomide, a tranquilizer drug she had taken, caused extensive deformities to the fetus. 1962: Abortion mother returns home An American mother-of-four is on her way home amid a storm of controversy after being given a legal abortion in Sweden. Sherri Finkbine, a TV presenter from Phoenix in Arizona, was denied an abortion in her home state following intense negative publicity surrounding her case. The 30-year-old mother decided to terminate her fifth pregnancy after discovering that tranquilizers she had taken in the first few weeks of her pregnancy contained the drug Thalidomide. In recent months there has been increasing evidence suggesting Thalidomide causes severe foetal deformities including missing limbs, deafness and blindness. Public condemnation Mrs Finkbine, host of children's television programme "Romper Room", told her story to the local newspaper, believing it would alert other mothers in the same situation to the dangers of the drug. But she became the focus of an intense anti-abortion campaign and worldwide public condemnation. The negative publicity led her local hospital in Phoenix to withdraw a tentative offer of a legal abortion for fear they may be held criminally liable - the current law in Arizona states that abortion can only be carried out to save the mother's life. Mrs Finkbine and her husband, Robert, a school teacher, took the case to the Arizona State Supreme Court but were unsuccessful. Despite vilification from anti-abortionists across the United States and the world she flew to Sweden where the operation was carried out. After the operation it was confirmed that the foetus had no legs and only one arm .
12. 1970 A member of the Third World Womens Alliance demonstrates https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/13/the-mississippi-abortion-case-and-the-fragile-legitimacy-of-the-supreme-court /The Mississippi Abortion Case and the Fragile Legitimacy of the Supreme Court Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is an open challenge to the Court’s authority, and perhaps broadly reflects a spirit of legal self-help that is running through the land. in this latest round of attacks on Roe, a novel line of argument has emerged: that forced pregnancy and parenthood no longer constitute a hardship for women. Lawyers representing Mississippi, the appellant in the lawsuit, describe a world that has fundamentally changed over the past fifty years, in which the burdens of parenting have been lifted and women have been empowered to have it all—to assume a career while still raising families. As for those women who would prefer not to parent, they now have the option to simply terminate their parental rights. In a legal brief, Mississippi described a fantasy land, where “many (largely post-dating Roe) laws protect equal opportunity—including prohibitions on sex and pregnancy discrimination in employment,” where the law guarantees parental leave, and where there is “support to offset the costs of childcare for working mothers.” The brief continued, “Sweeping policy advances now promote women’s full pursuit of both career and family.” In an interview with a local television station, the state attorney general, Lynn Fitch, added, as a flourish, “Fifty years ago, for professional women, they wanted you to make a choice. Now you don’t have to. Now you have the opportunity to be whatever you want to be. You have the option in life to really achieve your dreams, your goals, and you can have those beautiful children as well.” These would be wild claims under normal circumstances, but, in the midst of the pandemic, when child-care costs have been rising dramatically and when intermittent and impromptu school closures have forced nearly two million women out of the workforce, they are ludicrous.
13. 1960s Health fair at Castelar Elementary School The Movement suffered from misogyny and homophobia. Though perhaps less so than other Third World left groups (e.g. there were fewer instances of physical abuse and assault), women and queer-identified people fought for presence, voice, and their issues. At the same time, the analysis of a “triple oppression” of class, race, and gender for women, and the creation of a multiracial LGBT identity, opened a profound reworking of patriarchal and heterosexual norms. These movements within the Movement are crucial not only to appraising the Asian American Movement, but offer vital case studies for our intersectional present.
14. The Crenshaw Women’s Center The CRENSHAW WOMEN’S CENTER was the first women’s center in Los Angeles and was a ground-breaking facility serving women in a variety of capacities. It housed the nation’s first women’s clinic, Women’s Self-Help One, and was the site of The Great Yogurt Conspiracy. In three action-packed years, the Crenshaw Women’s Center generated an enormous amount of energy, pivotal change, and several firsts for the Women’s Rights Movement and second-wave feminism in Los Angeles and the nation. A Historic-Cultural Monument (HCM) application was prepared and submitted to the city of Los Angeles by Kate Eggert and Krisy Gosney.
15. “Más Bebés?”: An Investigation of the Sterilization of Mexican-American Women at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center during the 1960s and 70s