[dropcap size=big]M[/dropcap]ore than 200 women, most of them Latinas, were sterilized between 1968 and 1974 by a Los Angeles County medical center, a little-known eugenics incident that took place in postwar United States and continued for years despite lawsuits and protests.
That's right, women in L.A. County in modern times were sterilized by trained and licensed doctors during a period of trendy fears of a brown "population boom." Many involved are still alive.
One such case pitted a group of Latinas known as the Madigral 10 against L.A. county’s lead obstetrician, Dr. James Quilligan, who reportedly approved of the sterilizations on 10 women because “poor minority women in L.A. County were having too many babies.” The women lost the case with Judge Jesse Curtis ruling the doctors had the women’s “best interest” in mind.
The women's struggle for justice is the subject of a 2015 PBS documentary No Mas Bebes.