Matters of Choice: Puerto Rican Women's Struggle for Reproductive Freedom, and: Fertile Matters: The Politics of Mexican-Origin Women's Reproduction (review)

Elena R. Gutiérrez and Iris López in their recent monographs, respectively titled Fertile Matters and Matters of Choice, both discuss the practice of coercive sterilization among Latinas. Both authors provide an historical context in which to analyze the development of this practice: For Gutiérrez in Los Angeles, California, among Mexican-origin women and for López in Brooklyn, New York, among Puerto Rican women. However, each maintains a different emphasis in approaching the study of sterilization and the accompanying perceptions about Latina hyperfertility and reproduction. López spends much time analyzing women's personal stories through extensive ethnographic interviews focusing on women's agency and constraints in the sterilization process, while Gutiérrez largely provides a content analysis of various documents (legal, newspaper, organizational, and health policy) in order to understand the ideological constructs that gave way to the institutionalized practice of coerced sterilization. Given that both texts cover the topic of sterilization among Latinas, I will address the ways in which these projects are complementary and yield a rich and complex understanding of the issue among diverse Latina populations that face similar struggles of racism, classism, and sexism albeit in differing historical and geographical contexts.

Elena R. Gutiérrez, an assistant professor of Gender and Women's Studies and Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago, gathers a diverse and impressive number of sources to show how it is that the "problem" of Mexican-origin women's fertility and reproduction came to be constructed as such and the consequences that this framing has had for reproductive freedom and justice. As she states, "This is not a study of the fertility of Mexican women per se, but an investigation of the sociohistorical context within which such a topic, and the structures that shape it, become signifcant" (7). Using a social constructionist framework, arguing that, "social problems do not objectively exist, but are fundamentally conceived by certain interests within a particular context" (6), her analysis centers on the power of "controlling images" that circulated about Mexican-origin women and set the stage for the convergence of diverse groups such as the medical community, social scientists, environmental activists, population control proponents, and anti-immigrant nativists to come together against the perceived problem of the hyper-fertile Mexicana. Drawing on the work of Patricia Hill Collins, she notes that African American women have been controlled through the deployment of images such as the welfare queen, mammy, and Jezebel. Similarly, Gutiérrez argues that the image of the Mexican-origin woman as hyper-fertile has established a climate that allows for the reproduction and fertility of Mexican-origin women to become projects of and targets for medical intervention and social policy.

Gutiérrez begins by tracing the eugenics discourse developing in the 1930s and ensuing concerns over the under-population of white natives and the peril of the "invading" Mexicans of questionable stock. The overt eugenic perspective was eventually quelled, but the language of population control then gained much popularity and traction through the next few decades; she notes that by the 1970s overpopulation and immigration became dual concerns (and particularly salient in Los Angeles, California) for prominent individuals and institutions that could wield much power in political and media outlets. She highlights the work of Dr. John Tanton, a zero population growth advocate (and president of the organization by that name—ZPG), who was well-known for his population control stance, which was also still tinged with eugenic sentiments. He later wed this activism with immigration reform and the English-only movement, and he eventually founded the Federation of American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a group known for...