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junction with the family planning
initiatives of the War on Poverty,
launched by President Lyndon B.
Johnson in 1964.
For the most part, Madrigal v
Quilligan has been understood in
light of the thousands of unwanted
sterilizations reported in
the United States from the late
1960s to the mid-1970s. And
certainly, the experiences of the
Mexican-origin women who suffered
at the scalpels of County
General physicians mirror those
of the African American, Puerto
Rican, and Native American
women who came forth with
comparable stories during the
same years. Yet Madrigal v Quilligan
should also be analyzed longitudinally,
as a concluding link
in the history of forced sterilization
in modern California. Just as
this case highlights the confluence
of factors that facilitated
sterilization abuse in the early
1970s, it also illuminates the
longevity and potency of prosterilization
arguments predicated on
the protection of the public’s
health and resources.
THE YEAR WAS 1979 AND THE
place was the state capitol in
Sacramento, Calif. Assemblyman
Art Torres, chairman of the
Health Committee, introduced a
bill to the legislature to repeal
the state’s sterilization law. First
passed in the same chambers 70
years earlier and modified several
times over the decades,
this statute had sanctioned over
20000 nonconsensual sterilizations
on patients in state-run
homes and hospitals, or one third
of the more than 60000 such
procedures in the United States
in the 20th century. In a letter to
Governor Edmund G. Brown
urging his signature, Torres asserted
that the law was “outdated”
and that...