California’s long and dark history of forced sterilization was practiced freely by society throughout California during the 1930’s and 1940’s. It is difficult to imagine that this iniquitous and abusive practice was once normalized and accepted in the familiar area of Sonoma County, however, it shows an example of how the United States government has always and continues to try to control the bodies, health, and reproductive rights of women and people of color, especially Latina women. 

In 1891, the doors of the California Association for the Care and Training of Feeble Minded Children opened for the first time and went on to later be called Sonoma State Home. The clinic also went on to become perhaps the most occupied institutional sterilization center in the U.S with an estimation of over 5,000 sterilization requests between 1919 and 1952, according to the Press Democrat. Located in Eldridge in Sonoma County, Sonoma State Home was advertised as an asylum for children and young girls who needed additional care and support. However, evidence suggests that a majority of Sonoma State Home’s operations involved involuntary sterilization. 

California passed a legislation allowing state-mandated sterilizations in 1909 and ten years later helped lead other states such as Indiana to spread the practice of eugenics. Eugenics refers to the shaping of human reproduction to maximize attractive features, and was a very common practice during the late 1900’s. The practice aimed to eliminate the possibility of reproduction from people that were deemed unattractive by the state. These “unattractive” features were mostly ones found on non-white people. The practice gained attention in several other states, leading to thousands of involuntary sterilization cases throughout the country as the government was successfully modifying the bodies of innocent people. 

Records and evidence show that although it was never explicitly suggested anywhere in the legislation that permitted these operations, they were based in “classist and racist” ideology, as stated in an article published by the Press Democrat. The writer of the article also stated, “Those singled out for sterilization overwhelmingly came from the lower economic classes, and especially from immigrant communities.” This is a huge example of federal and state laws made with the intention to hurt and disable people almost always being aimed at disadvantaged communities to help ensure that they remain underserved and facing poverty. 

Similarly, in Los Angeles in the 1960’s and 70’s, Mexican and Mexican-American women were coerced into signing forms of sterilization at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center. Some of the women were unable to speak or understand English and others were simply lied to in order to get them to sign the documents. According to the Institute for Healthcare Policy & Innovation, “State-sanctioned sterilizations reached their peak in the 1930s and 1940s but continued and, in some states, rose during the 1950s and 1960”. The sterilization incidents concerning the Chicano Movement in Los Angeles occurred during the later part of the eugenics movement in the 1960’s. 

However, reproductive rights haven’t disappeared from society. Today, people are still fighting all over the world to have control over their own bodies. Taking a step back, it is easy to see the comparison between the Mexican and Mexican-American women who were traumatized by the hospital in Los Angeles and the women in Texas who are currently fighting for their own reproductive rights. The law states that if you’re six weeks pregnant, you cannot have an abortion in Texas. The law was first introduced in May, went into effect in September, and has since then been the subject of many political conversations sweeping the country. 

Today, California is getting closer to paying living victims of the involuntary sterilization conducted by Sonoma State Home and other sterilization clinics like it with reparations. There is also still hope that Roe vs Wade can be upheld against the Texas abortion law, similar to how they helped fight for the Chicana women in Los Angeles. For over a century now, Latina women have had to deal with the government asserting themselves in laws concerning their reproductive rights and at a moment like this, many look to the California government to step up for the men and women who are being stripped of their rights in Texas.