Reparations for CA forced sterilization survivors: Support AB 1007
By Aminah Elster,
The Daily Californian
| 04. 02. 2021
Between 1909 and 1979, California forcibly sterilized over 20,000 people of color, people with disabilities and imprisoned people. Based on white supremacist eugenics laws and ableist conceptions of who was “unfit to reproduce,” people with disabilities and women of color suffered forced sterilization. While the state’s eugenics laws were officially repealed in 1979, advocates working in California’s women’s prisons in the early 2000s uncovered continued coercive sterilizations occurring inside the prisons which targeted women and transgender and gender-nonconforming people of color.
For the third year in a row, the California Coalition for Women Prisoners is co-sponsoring legislation, AB 1007, introduced by Assemblywoman Wendy Carrilo, to provide compensation and reparations to survivors of forced sterilizations in the women’s prisons. The two other co-sponsors are California Latinas for Reproductive Justice and Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund. This important legislation has failed to win budgetary approval in the past. This year, we are hopeful that with increased public awareness and pressure, California will finally be held accountable for this horrific form of racist and gendered state violence.
A state audit conducted in...
Related Articles
By Katherine Long, Ben Foldy, and Lingling Wei, The Wall Street Journal | 12.13.2025
Inside a closed Los Angeles courtroom, something wasn’t right.
Clerks working for family court Judge Amy Pellman were reviewing routine surrogacy petitions when they spotted an unusual pattern: the same name, again and again.
A Chinese billionaire was seeking parental...
By David Jensen, The California Stem Cell Report | 12.11.2025
California’s stem cell and gene therapy agency today approved spending $207 million more on training and education, sidestepping the possibility of using the cash to directly support revolutionary research that has been slashed and endangered by the Trump administration.
Directors...
By Sarah Kliff, The New York Times | 12.10.2025
Micah Nerio had known since his early 30s that he wanted to be a father, even if he did not have a partner. He spent a decade saving up to pursue surrogacy, an expensive process where he would create embryos...
Several recent Biopolitical Times posts (1, 2, 3, 4) have called attention to the alarmingly rapid commercialization of “designer baby” technologies: polygenic embryo screening (especially its use to purportedly screen for traits like intelligence), in vitro gametogenesis (lab-made eggs and sperm), and heritable genome editing (also termed embryo editing or reproductive gene editing). Those three, together with artificial wombs, have been dubbed the “Gattaca stack” by Brian Armstrong, CEO of the cryptocurrency company...