Sterilization

Latinas/os have a complex relationship to surgical sterilization as well as to related long-acting forms of birth control. For more than one hundred years, Latinas/ os—above all Chicanas and puertorriqueñas—have been subjected episodically to unwanted sterilizations in state institutions and public clinics. At the same time, Latinas/os have struggled to obtain access to safe and affordable birth control, including sterilization, contraceptive technologies, and in recent years, long-acting reversible contraception (LARC). This dueling pattern of hypervigilant reproductive control and structural exclusion from reproductive health services has characterized, and continues to characterize, Latinas/os’ fraught relationship to sterilization.