HERE YOU
WILL BE ABLE TO READ ABOUT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S WAY TO FIGHT OVER-POPULATION IN LATINO AND MINORITY
COMMUNITIES...STERILIZATION!
Documents
and articles below show how the American government used misleading techniques to sterilize a 1/3 of the women in Puerto Rico
by 1965; all with funds from the U.S. government and authorized by Congress.
You will also
see a video that ties Republican President George H.W. Bush to a similar program that sterilized Native American women.
Female Sterilization in Puerto Rico
by Sara Hoerlein
From: http://clem.mscd.edu/~princer/ant440b/paper_04.htm
There
are a number of examples in post Civil War America of eugenic programs but none as effective and widespread as the mass female
sterilization in Puerto Rico. Beginning in the years following WW I, a program was initiated by the United States government,
the medical community and the local government of Puerto Rico, to name a few, which resulted in the unprecedented sterilization
of 1/3 of the female population by 1965, and the continued use of sterilization on a broad scale by Puerto Rican women as
a form of birth control (Presser 1980).
The island of Puerto Rico is over 80%
Catholic and providing services to prevent pregnancy was a felony until the 1930’s. The historic and social conditions
-- medical, legal, and political -- that were conducive to this mass sterilization movement are important and of interest.
For decades the United States has blamed overpopulation for economic problems, unemployment, and poverty in Puerto Rico, while
ignoring the fact that they (the U.S.) have played an enormous role in generating and solidifying these conditions (Michaelson
1981). As a result, non-official programs with the intent of distributing birth control information and educating specifically
poor families about the need for such practices were implemented in the1920’s (Presser 1973). Incredibly, as
overpopulation was being blamed for economic crisis in the 1920’s, "less than 2% of the population owned 80% of
the land" (Hartmann 1995 p.247). Strong opposition from the Catholic Church, unfavorable legal status of birth control,
a disinterested public, and insufficient federal funding from the U.S., prevented these earlyn programs from becoming successful.
In 1937, 23 birth control clinics were opened by a private organization and a bill was signed that made it no
longer a felony to advertise contraceptives or provide services to prevent pregnancy (Presser 1973). Another bill was signed
authorizing the "Commissioner of Health in Puerto Rico to regulate the teaching and dissemination of eugenic principles,
including contraception, to health centers and maternal hospitals" which was followed by the opening of 160 birth control
clinics, private and public (Presser 1973 p.25). Then came law #136, passed by the U.S. government, which legalized sterilization
for other than strictly medical reasons (Garcia 1985). Underlying the legal jargon was the advocacy of weeding out the "unfit".
It was then that sterilization was introduced to Puerto Rican women by physicians as a means of birth control. By 1939 the
government was actively supporting birth control clinics and the distribution of contraceptives (Presser 1973). This was timely
and convenient for the recent arrivals of U.S. manufacturing companies that needed cheap labor, i.e. women who could be "freed"
from childcare for employment (Hartmann 1995). The United States, who previously had been stingy with money provided to P.R.
for birth control education and programs, now was sending enormous amounts and government funds "encouraged women to
accept sterilization by providing it at minimal or no cost" (Hartmann 1995 p.248). In fact, the Family Planning Agency
of Puerto Rico receives 750,000-900,000$ of its budget from the US Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and that
amount has increased accordingly in the last 25 years (Big Mama Rag 1977 p.9). In terms of the ratio of sterilized
persons, these actions set in motion the most intense and successful eugenic population control program in U.S. history.
U.S. opinion was echoed in the words of the first North American governor appointed to Puerto Rico when he declared
that there were too many Puerto Ricans, specifically poor laborers, and not enough wealthy land and business owners (Garcia
1985). By 1930 unemployment had reached 37%, sugarcane planters were complaining of the "excess population" and
U.S. corporations were flourishing in this land of cheap labor and tax breaks. A few years later, as WW II ravaged Europe
and devastated the textile industry there, sweat shops clamored to hire P.R. women to provide what Europe was unable to. Propaganda
film clips shown in the United States in the 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s further reinforce the position
that the U. S. took toward P.R. -- showing the poverty stricken people and blaming these circumstances on the overpopulation
problem, stating that U.S. businesses along with sterilization programs would "cure" the economic woes of P.R (Garcia
1985). To the U.S., Puerto Rico was a source of cheap labor, high profit, tax-free business opportunities as well as a testing
area for a population control program. Puerto Rico’s removed geographical location, a population of non-Northern European,
Catholic people, and media promotion of "overpopulation" hysteria, all worked together to make this eugenics program
acceptable to the U.S. majority -- whom historically had been resistant to eugenic programs.
Of
the three components -- political, legal, and medical -- that made this program possible, the medical community was by far
the most influential and first hand at implementing the program. The physicians pushing for sterilization as a means of birth
control believed that contraceptive methods were too complicated for lower class Puerto Rican women to understand, in effect,
they were "too dumb" -- to the physicians sterilization seemed to be the most feasible solution to the "problem"
(Presser 1973). Many private clinics were established in the 1940’s for the sole purpose of performing sterilizations
and it was common practice to persuade women upon delivering a child to accept sterilization soon after giving birth, when
the woman was in a position of reduced capacity to effectively make such a decision due to medication, pain and exhaustion
(Presser 1973). "By the1950’s demand for sterilization far exceeded the facilities . . . and roughly one-sixth
of all Puerto Rican women were sterilized" (Presser 1973 p. 41). "La operacion" was the term that came to identify
the widely available and the popular means of birth control.
Women in Puerto Rico
"were no doubt eager for birth control" but the fact is that it was not voluntary, in the context of being informed
and being provided other options of non-permanent birth control (Hartmann 1991 p.248). The targeted women were often unaware
of the irreversibility of sterilization and pressure was put on them to accept the operation in exchange for longer hospital
stays after childbirth. Physicians in Puerto Rico were and are held in high regard and as proponents of sterilization as birth
control for the poor and uneducated, used that status to influence the decision of the woman. As stated in an interview in
Big Mama Rag with a Puerto Rican woman, "doctors in Puerto Rico are viewed by most people as being almost holy"
(1977 p.3). Other forms of contraceptives were not readily available to the lower class and not advocated by the medical establishment
(Paul 1995). Hartmann notes that the Catholic Church held a somewhat more mild opposition to sterilization in comparison to
contraceptives and abortion-sterilization could be justified for medical reasons (1995). Physicians often made medical
records appear as if the sterilization was necessary for the health of the woman, almost never was it documented as a means
of birth control (Presser 1973). This no doubt also played a role in a population that is almost completely Catholic. In an
interview with two Puerto Rican women in Big Mama Rag, one woman states "at the beginning of the sterilization
program, the church sort of subtly endorsed it"(1977 p. 9). And, as mentioned previously, even though the government
did not admit a formal policy, it actively supported and encouraged sterilization. According to Garcia, Vincente Acevido,
a previous mayor, says families are ‘limited to three children’ -- and there is no official policy? (Garcia 1985).
He states the lack of population growth according to the 1970 census is a great achievement (Garcia 1985). With these influential
social forces exerting pressure on a targeted sector of the female population, one can see that the sterilization movement
clearly was not a voluntary decision in most cases.
Ana Maria Garcia created a documentary
film about sterilization in Puerto Rico entitled "La Operacion" which reinforces, through interviews with sterilized
women and hospital/government/agency officials, this film confirms that the sterilization process was not completely voluntary.
In the film, Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias states that population control was indeed a social policy in P.R. that
targeted a group that was believed "shouldn’t have children" by other groups (Garcia 1985). According to one
interview, each and every female in one extended family had been sterilized. The elder woman wept, saying that the family
would end with no more women able to have children (Garcia 1985). Another woman, only 22 years old, was told by her doctor
that sterilization was the only choice for birth control. She was given no other advice, information or options (Garcia 1985).
Yet another woman believed that the procedure was reversible and that no surgery was involved. Even though the doctor knew
her desire to have more children later, she was not told the truth. She concedes that she went through with the procedure
on her own, but she is sad because she is young and would like to have another child – she states that if she would
have known the truth, she would not have agreed (Garcia 1985).
In one town alone, Barceloneta,
20,000 women were sterilized between 1956 and 1976 (Garcia 1985). There were no restrictions on age, health or the number
of children one already had. One woman from Barceloneta recounts the story of how she saw a woman going into the hospital
with a suitcase and was curious. She said, innocent of what was going on there, that she wanted to go to the clinic with a
suitcase and stay too. So she asked and they told her all she had to do was agree to a procedure -- so she did -- to get a
stay in the hospital (Garcia 1985). By 1958, the total birth rate of Puerto Rico was on the decline and varying geographically,
10-42% of the women in towns and cities were sterilized (Garcia 1985).
As is evident from
these interviews, some women chose to be sterilized but were in no way informed about the procedure, that it was indeed surgery,
or sadly, its irreversibility. If it is said ‘if I had only known, I would not have done it’ than how can this
possibly be an informed and consensual choice? This deceit was in no way limited to a few cases, as the statistics of young
women sterilized illustrate. 2/3 between the ages of 20-29, 92% before the age of 35, with the average standing at the ripe
old age of 26 (Big Mama Rag 1975).
In addition to the medical establishment and governmental
funding, sterilization was promoted in other, not so obvious manners. Public schools drilled that having small families practically
guaranteed financial stability and the capability to "have more" -- like the nice pictures of the white,
happy, American families, with picket fenced homes shown in the text books (Garcia 1985). A small family meant ‘progress’.
This was an attractive setting the average Puerto Rican rarely had seen before and was led to believe that they had to get
sterilized to have a good and prosperous life. In the late 40’s and early 50’s, it had become ‘in style’
to get sterilized and volunteers traveled across the island, preaching birth control as a means to prevent abortion
(Garcia 1985).
Not only was this island used as a testing ground for a population control
program, but as a laboratory for the pill as well. In 1956, the first birth control pills were tested on Puerto Rican women
living in government housing-they were 20 times stronger than the pills used in the U.S. 30 years later
(Garcia 1985). Many women became ill, and as Garcia has shown, were completely in the dark that they were being used as guinea
pigs for a potentially dangerous drug. Nurses, like doctors, are influential and respected persons in Puerto Rican society.
They came to the doors of these women and told them to take these new pills as part of a family planning program -- again
the influence of a person of status was used to target a specific portion of the population (Garcia 1985). Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias
confirms the allegations that Puerto Rican women were unknowingly used as a "laboratory for development of birth control
technology" (Garcia 1985). The medical community and pharmeceutical companies have contributed and fueled, probably more
than any other group, the eugenics program in Puerto Rico.
