No Más Bebés: A Documentary on the Sterilizations of Latina Mothers at an LA County Hospital

Biopolitical Times

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, some women who went to Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center (LAC+USC) to deliver their babies went home without the ability to have children again. 

The documentary No Más Bebés, Spanish for “no more babies,” portrays the stories of Mexican-American mothers who were coercively sterilized at LAC+USC during those years. Directed by Academy Award nominee Renee Tajima-Peña and produced by UCLA historian Virginia Espino, the film premieres at a sold-out screening on Sunday, June 14 in the LA Muse section of the Los Angeles Film Festival. An additional screening has been added to the film festival on Tuesday, June 16 due to popular demand.

The film explains that women were asked by their obstetricians to sign consent forms for emergency caesarean sections while in the late stages of active labor. Most did not speak English; many do not recall being offered these forms. None knew that they were agreeing to tubal ligation procedures while giving birth. 

As the film depicts, these women sued their doctors in the landmark Madrigal v. Quilligan case after they discovered they had been sterilized. It juxtaposes rare archival footage of the trial and the emerging Chicano rights movement with recent interviews of the women who were subjected to the unwanted procedure.

Madrigal v. Quilligan was a federal class action lawsuit involving the sterilization of ten Latina women without informed consent. Initially, the lawsuit named Dr. Edward James Quilligan, head of the Women’s Hospital at LAC+USC when the sterilizations were taking place; the LAC+USC Medical Center; the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; and the U.S. Government. The defense argued successfully that charges against Dr. Quilligan and others holding positions of power within LAC+USC should be dropped, leaving as defendants the ten doctors who performed sterilization procedures on the plaintiffs. This in effect transformed the case into a set of personal grievances, rather than a case against institutional biases.

While the lawsuit led to better informed consent for patients, requiring that hospital forms are translated to multiple languages so that patients can understand the procedures completely, the judge ultimately sided with the county hospital, ruling in favor of the doctors. He argued that it was not objectionable if a physician thought that a tubal ligation could improve a perceived overpopulation problem. 

The documentary interviews a wide range of the key figures in the case: the lead plaintiff, Dolores Madrigal; defendant Dr. Edward James Quilligan; five other women sterilized without their consent; and Antonia Hernandez, the lawyer who represented them in the trial. It also includes Dr. Bernard Rosenfeld, who suspected that Mexican immigrants were being sterilized by tubal ligation without their consent and helped expose the malpractice at the hospital. Rosenfeld is now a nationally known specialist in tubal ligation reversal surgery.  

No Más Bebés draws on the growing body of research into the history of sterilizations in California by scholars such as Elena Gutiérrez and Alexandra Minna Stern. Unfortunately, this history is not that far behind us. In 2003, California Governor Gray Davis issued an apology  acknowledging that “between 1909 and 1964, an estimated 20,000 Californians were sterilized” under California law in state-run institutions. However, the apology does not address the sterilizations that took place at LAC+USC during the 1960s and well into the 1970s.

Even more recently, evidence emerged of unauthorized sterilizations in California prisons due to persistent efforts by Justice Now and an extensive investigation by Corey Johnson of the Center for Investigative Reporting. Those revelations prompted a state audit and a 2013 bill, authored by State Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson, which prohibits coercive sterilization for the purpose of birth control for people incarcerated in California prisons. 

No Más Bebés will alert many more people to these sadly under-recognized chapters of California’s past, while educating its viewers about the coerced sterilizations at LAC+USC and honoring the women who were its victims by sharing their stories.

Previously on Biopolitical Times: