US-backed sterilization program in Puerto Rico reexamined in new docuseries

By THE STAR STAFF

A new episode of the docuseries Speak UP, Speak OUT is prompting renewed attention to the United States’ decades-long sterilization campaign in Puerto Rico, an initiative that left lasting trauma for thousands of women and remains a stark example of reproductive coercion in U.S. history.

The episode, titled Declared Unfit to Reproduce – Eugenics, revisits the government-backed program that began in 1937, when sterilization was made legal on the island under Governor Blanton Winship, according to a report from Ms. Magazine.

As the article notes, “By the 1970s, one-third of all Puerto Rican women of childbearing age had been sterilized, most without being properly informed that the procedure was permanent.”

The policy emerged amid economic turmoil following the U.S. takeover of Puerto Rico after the 1898 Spanish-American War. With unemployment at 36 percent and widespread poverty, federal officials, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt, embraced overpopulation as an explanation for the island’s economic struggles. Winship’s sterilization plan, fueled by eugenic ideology, was promoted as a modern solution, even as women were misled into believing the procedure was reversible, according to Ms. Magazine. 

Sterilization messaging soon permeated daily life. Textbooks promoted small nuclear families, factories opened in-house clinics, and some hospitals required women with two or more children to undergo tubal ligations immediately after childbirth. The procedure became so normalized that it was commonly referred to simply as la operación.

The docuseries also revisits Puerto Rico’s role in early birth control pill trials. In 1955, researcher Gregory Pincus conducted large-scale testing on Puerto Rican women who were not told the pill was experimental. According to Ms. Magazine, “17 percent of the participants dropped out due to serious side effects… In the end, three women passed away due to complications from the trials.”

Activists, including Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias, helped bring the sterilization abuses to light in the 1970s, leading to federal reforms such as informed consent requirements and a mandatory 30‑day waiting period.

But the docuseries underscores that forced sterilization remains a contemporary issue. Thirty-one states and Washington, D.C., still allow some form of involuntary sterilization, particularly affecting people with disabilities. Incarcerated women have also been subjected to non-consensual procedures; more than 100 women were sterilized in California prisons between 2006 and 2010. Reports from ICE detention centers, including allegations from a whistleblower nurse in Georgia, describe unnecessary hysterectomies and inadequate post-surgical care.