No Más Bebés (No More Babies)

Renee Tajima-Peña's PBS-aired documentary focuses on a shameful chapter in California history involving one of the most horrifying denials of civil rights imaginable. During the 1960s and early ‘70s, the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center tricked and bullied Mexican immigrant women who gave birth through emergency cesarean sections into signing documents authorizing tubal ligation surgery that effectively sterilized them. In 1975, 10 of these women joined in the Madrigal v. Quilligan lawsuit that sought damages from the hospital, the state, and the federal government. No Más Bebés interviews several of the women behind the lawsuit, who talk about the circumstances that resulted in their loss of reproductive rights—including doctors withholding pain medication until they signed consent forms—and their shock when they discovered what had happened. The medical community argued that the procedures were undertaken because doctors felt the women faced health problems, and most had already borne several children. The film points out that during this period a widespread fear of overpopulation resulted in federal funding for population control studies. But limits on childbearing were never suggested for white women with large families, which raises the shocking specter of racially motivated eugenics. A disturbing and heartbreaking documentary, this is highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (P. Hall)