Renee Tajima-Pena and Virginia Espinso’s 2015 documentary No Mas Bebes tells the harrowing tale of a number of Mexican immigrant mothers who found themselves the victims of forced sterilization after visiting Los Angeles County General Hospital in the 1970s to give birth. The documentary delves into a number of vital and important issues central to Latina rights, reproductive rights, and the state of immigrant relations in the United States. In its depiction of the implicit horrors of the Mexican immigrant experience, these individuals are shown as brave victims of a system that punishes women for being immigrants, thus showing the existing and heightening tensions that native-born Americans feel towards immigration. The overall result is a profound and compelling film that demands that women of color have their voices heard and their rights maintained, regardless of any perceived political or social backlash to their presence in the United States.
The central event that No Mas Bebes follows is the lawsuit Madrigal v. Quilligan, the landmark civil rights case that secured the rights of all women to bear a child if they so choose. The case is one of the most important and well-known instances of forced sterilization in the United States, in which a mixture of factors involving racial animosity, lack of cultural training, and language barriers contributed to ten women being mistakenly coerced into approving of sterilization measures at Los Angeles County Medical Center (Gutierrez and Fuentes 90). Many of these instances were the result of not just racism and classism, but “the discourse of overpopulation and nativism” that was present in America at the time (Gutierrez and Fuentes 91). In essence, doctors at this particular hospital felt, at least in part, resentment at the influx of Mexican immigrants coming into California and the United States, and held cultural ideas of them making far too many babies for the nation to have to pay for; as a result, they chose to forcibly sterilize these women and make them think that they had openly agreed to it in order to cover their tracks.
No Mas Bebes covers these issues in incredible detail, recounting the stories of many of these victims in a way that demonstrates the divide between the welfare of Mexican immigrants and the concern (or lack thereof) from white doctors and physicians about said welfare. Within the documentary, a deliberate rundown of the factors that played into these forced sterilization decisions is recounted. Among these factors were the growing anti-immigrant movements in the 1970s, as well as federally-funded family planning programs, inexperienced doctors getting their first real-world experience in understaffed maternity wards, and more. Along the way, the reactions of the women in question are captured in incredible, harrowing interviews, as well as footage of their everyday lives post-sterilization and their attempts to recover from the emotional and psychological pain.
One major social factor was the pervading wisdom of the time that poor people should not be allowed to have children – that these children would simply go on welfare and the taxpayers would have to pay for them. This was an extremely prevalent view, especially among affluent whites in the 1970s, and particularly in California (whose Latino immigrant population was rapidly growing). Many of the doctors relied upon racial stereotypes to make their decisions regarding the sterilization of Latina mothers, often presuming that women who spoke only Spanish were “illegal immigrants or on welfare” (Gutierrez and Fuentes 92). In many ways, the doctors who committed these sterilizations thought they were doing the country a favor, as well as punishing people they thought illegally immigrated to the US while pregnant so they could have the baby there and not get deported.
Mexicans were also subject to the stereotype that they had lots of children very rapidly, due to their likelihood of being Catholic, and the idea of these people having four or more children was very threatening to these medical professionals. These kinds of racist and sexist attitudes fueled much of these unethical decisions, as doctors were motivated to “prescribe care according to their eugenic ideology rather than the physical needs of the patient” (Espino 67). What this means is that doctors firmly believed in the inherent superiority of the white race over the lower-class, non-English speaking Latino/Latina patients with whom they were interacting on a regular basis. Their lack of understanding of English, comparatively poorer income, and differing social norms led to a certain level of animosity that led white doctors to think of Latinas as ‘lesser.’
The scope of these attitudes lied outside that single hospital, as well, contributing to a larger cultural perception of Latinos as undesired and undeserving of childbearing. For instance, the Family Planning and Population Research Act of 1970 ended up providing millions of dollars to research family planning, sex education, and contraceptive training. This, along with the lifting of a ban on federally funded sterilization, incentivized hospitals to perform tubal ligations in order to get government money. This, along with a greater cultural fear of overpopulation in the world at large (personified by the popularization of the eugenics movement in the mid-20th century), meant that American culture held a very distinct fear of childbirth that contributed heavily to these forced sterilizations.
This horrifying event, as shown in the documentary, spurred a huge movement of Chicana resistance in the 1970s, which led to incredible outcomes for the women victimized by these forced sterilizations. Gloria Molina, one of the most prominent Chicana feminist leaders of the 1970s, played an important part in getting these legislative changes made to restrict access to sterilization consent forms based on time periods and other factors. However, these issues were also not without controversy – some white feminists still wanted to be able to get themselves sterilized on demand, failing to understand that Mexican women were being pushed to sterilize themselves in the midst of painful labor (which, along with the language barrier, removed any potential for calm, informed consent to the procedure). As Molina says in the documentary, "They weren't taking into account that if you were Spanish-speaking, and if you don't speak English, you were being denied a right, totally.” This clash between the white feminist and Chicana feminist movements regarding reproductive rights was yet another element the film worked on.
Apart from the political implications, the individual pain that the women sterilized at LA County General in the 1970s experienced is well covered in the documentary. The women are interviewed at length, expressing confusion, dismay and bafflement over their treatment by the doctors, asserting that they did not know what was even going on at the time due to the language barriers and the lack of communication by the doctors themselves. Consuelo Hermosillo, one of the ten women involved in the Madrigal v. Quilligan case, still has the question of why they sterilized her in the first place. "I always keep these questions with me, and I never get those answers.” In the midst of the social and political ramifications of these issues of forced sterilization, No Mas Bebes manages to maintain these personal impacts on the individuals who suffered in this specific case, making the effects of these unwanted procedures deeply felt by the audience.
Overall, No Mas Bebes is a fascinating portrait of the need to fight for equal rights, immigrant welfare, and reproductive rights/justice for those who have been victimized in that way. The women in the documentary were subject to disgusting behavior as the result of white animosity and fear/hatred of illegal immigrants, who felt that their very agency did not matter in the face of discriminatory attitudes toward Mexicans and immigrants. Through the unprecedented victory in the Madrigal v. Quilligan case, Latina women were granted reproductive autonomy, and the rights for all women to bear children and make informed choices about their reproductive health were greatly supported. However, the issue of cultural barriers and elements of discrimination against Latinos based on stereotypes of illegal immigration, perceived lack of intelligence and income, and more remain potent issues in American life today. Even now, issues of overpopulation and the perception of Mexicans as lazy people who should not be allowed to have children persist in the nation, and cases like Madrigal v. Quilligan act as important milestones for the erosion of these perceptions from a social justice perspective.
Works Cited
Espino, Virginia. "Chicana Resistance in the 1970s." TITLE Las obreras: Chicana Politics of
Work and Family. Aztlan Anthology Series, Volume 1. 20 (1993): 65.
Gutiérrez, Elena R., and Liza Fuentes. "Population Control by Sterilization: The Cases of Puerto
Rican and Mexican-Origin Women in the United States." Latino (a) Research Review: 85.
Tajima-Pena, Renee and Virginia Espino (dirs.). No Mas Bebes. PBS Independent Lens, 2015.
