Sterilization of Women and Justice
During the 1960s and 1970s, Chicana women in Los Angeles went to the LAC+USC Medical Center to give birth. While there, these women were coerced into signing certain forms. They would be asked to sign these consent forms at inappropriate times, such as during labor, or would be threatened with their death or the death of their child if they did not allow consent for certain procedures. These consent forms allowed doctors to perform a tubal ligation on these women. This was not actually consensual as the women did not know exactly what the form was for. Some of the patients could not read English and others thought sterilization meant cleaning through imprecise translation showing that the signing of the forms was not truly consensual. This led to many Chicana women leaving the hospital sterilized regardless of whether or not …show more content…
The forced sterilization of women of color in L.A. demonstrated injustices as a result of racist ideologies, such as Chicana women being seen as contributors to overpopulation and unable to support their children, that was responsible for the targeting of Chicana women and gender forming ideologies, such as women being important, that led to the violation of reproductive rights for women.
The forced sterilization of women derived from ideologies that were against overpopulation, such as the zero population growth movement. The zero population growth movement promoted the ideology that the population rate was growing too fast and needed to be reduced to zero. This idea became popular after the release of The Population Bomb. This book justified the zero growth movement by stating that the world would run out of resources for the increasing population. This ideology was