No Más Bebés Producer\'s Statement

Producer's Statement

I am a native Angelino who came of age in the late 1970s. I recall rushing home from Franklin High School to catch my favorite daytime drama, General Hospital. Like everyone else from my generation I was fixated on the complicated relationship between Luke and Laura, and I tuned in whenever I could to bear witness to their legendary romance. But in my everyday reality I knew that the photograph of the hospital in the opening credits, the real-life Los Angeles County General Hospital, commonly known as "The County," lacked the glamour and quality of care displayed on the television soap opera. It was a prevalent assumption that one went to The County to die, not to get better. And by the late 1970s the 19-story building designed in the Moderne style dominated the Eastside skyline more as a haunted structure than a place of health and healing.

I learned of the unwanted sterilizations taking place at the LA County-USC Medical Center twenty years after the fact, as a graduate student in a Chicano History seminar. My professor, Dr. Vicki Ruiz, built her courses around narratives that rescued forgotten stories about women, particularly Mexican and Chicana women. Her work sheds light on the many ways Latinas have fought for civil rights. The Madrigal v. Quilligan lawsuit was then a little known story about a small group of Mexican immigrant women banding together to challenge a large public institution. Ruiz highlighted the lawsuit in her lecture on the Chicana Movement and when I heard her speak about the case I knew it would become my life's work to ensure that this landmark lawsuit would become as well known as Brown v. Board of Education, Miranda v. Arizona and Roe v. Wade.

I grew up in the shadows of The County and was outraged to find out that women like my immigrant mother were undergoing unwanted sterilizations during my lifetime. My Mexican heritage was a source of emotional strength for me, and I was deeply hurt by the idea that it could make me a target for abusive medical practices. Like the women who have come to be known as the Madrigal 10, the women in my family have seen their dreams cut short by institutional prejudice. And like the Madrigal 10 they have found ways to overcome bigotry and to become full participants in our American story. My role as a historian has been to follow in the footsteps of my mentor, and rescue histories of perseverance and resilience, and to highlight the uncommon courage of mothers and activists whose bravery benefits us all.

Joining director Renee Tajima-Peña on a documentary film project to investigate the history of sterilizations at LA-USC Medical Center was an act contra el olvido (against forgetting) and fulfilled my hope to share this important story with a wide and diverse audience. As women of color we shared the common goal of humanizing the story by listening to the mothers who experienced sterilizations. How did the unwanted surgeries impact their lives? How did the experience shape their future? We were welcomed into the lives of several of the Madrigal v. Quilligan plaintiffs who showed us through their strength that the love of family can empower one to overcome even the most unspeakable violation.