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After the state sterilized thousands of Californians without their consent, lawmakers offered reparations in 2021 by creating the Forced or Involuntary Sterilization Compensation Program. But if you’re eligible for compensation, you need to apply soon — the program is due to expire at the end of this year.
Between 1909 and 1979, state-run hospitals and clinics forcibly sterilized an estimated 20,000 mostly Black, Latino and Indigenous people, in keeping with state eugenics policies. Even after California banned the practice in 1979, the state continued to sterilize inmates in California women’s prisons. The procedures performed without the patients’ consent included hysterectomies, ovary removals and tubal ligations.
Jennifer James, an assistant professor at UC San Francisco and an advocate for sterilization survivors, said some of them were asked to sign consent forms that weren’t in their native language or once they were under anesthesia.
“People went in for one procedure and didn’t know until after they came out that they’d had a hysterectomy,” she said. “People thought they were consenting to having fibroids removed; they thought they were consenting to biopsies. They...