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Chapter Six The Right to Have Children Chicanas Organizing Against Sterilization Abuse Y olanda Nava, representing Comisión Femenil Mexicana Nacional, began her 1973 testimony before the California Commission on the Status of Women with a frank and fundamental point: “Let me begin by stating that contrary to the stereotype of the Chicana at home making tortillas and babies, the Chicana has been and will continue to be an integral part of the work force.”1 Comisión is a feminist group founded in 1970 to focus on the needs and issues relevant to Chicanas. As one of the first and only organizations focusing on Chicana issues and promoting Chicana leadership, Comisión and Latina concerns were being represented before the California commission for the first time. Slated to speak on the issue of “The Chicana and Unemployment,” Nava used her allotted time to challenge the public stereotype of Chicanas as baby machines. Drawing from statistics that she had compiled, she showed that Chicanas were indeed active participants in the workforce but overrepresented in low-paying jobs in the service sector, where they typically received few, if any, benefits. According to Nava and Comisión, Chicanas were relegated to caretaking and service positions in part because of the pejorative social stereotypes that narrowly defined them: “The stereotype of the Chicana as homemaker and ‘mother’ has left available to her jobs which are similar to those she performs in the home—hence the preponderance of Chicanas as domestic, laundry and cleaning workers.”2 By identifying Chicanas as workers, not baby-makers, in her opening statement, Nava purposefully sidestepped a long-standing stereotype. Her words provide one example of how Comisión members and other Chicana feminists were aware of the derogatory stereotype about their reproduction circulating in the public domain, and that some openly contested it. In particular, Chicana feminists and activists speculated that sterilization abuse and other compromised health care were directly related to these existing stereotypes. In her classic piece “La Feminista,” published in 1974, T4292.indb 94 T4292.indb 94 7/27/07 7:22:51 AM 7/27/07 7:22:51 AM Chicanas Organizing Against Sterilization Abuse 95 Anna Nieto Gómez specifically pointed to the problematics of the breeder concept. Sexist racist stereotypes depict the Chicana people as being a sexually irresponsible people. Chicanas are described as “breeders.” Sociologists explain this condition as a result of a submissive and animalistic nature and childlike will. . . . Darwinistic doctors who feel that the poor are a burden of the strong play God with the bodies of women. As a result, Chicanas are victims of constant malpractice. They are involuntarily experimented with, and involuntarily sterilized.3 Nieto Gomez’s contention that social-scientific and medical discourse led to the medical mistreatment of Mexican-origin women reinforced the burgeoning argument that images and ideas of Mexican women as breeders have direct bearing on their reproductive experiences. As Nava and Nieto Gomez both indicate, by the 1970s Chicana feminists had begun to identify what sociologist Patricia Hill Collins has called controlling images, or stereotypes, as a crucial influence shaping their experiences as women of color in the United States.4 In this chapter, I focus on Chicana activism against coercive sterilization, drawing from their written speeches, public testimonies, and oral history interviews to show how this involved publicly challenging the controlling images of Mexican-origin women. In so doing, Chicanas gave voice to how the stereotype of Mexicanorigin women as breeders profoundly limits their social, economic, and political opportunities. Moreover, their individual and collective efforts also dispel the existing stereotype that women of Mexican origin are simply at home having children by directly demonstrating their involvement in political activism. Chicana activists organized coalitions, circulated petitions, held public forums and rallies, and took other direct action against reproductive abuse at the Los Angeles County Medical Center (lacmc). Newly formed organizations dedicated to Chicana issues, including the Comisión Femenil Mexicana Nacional as well as the Chicana Rights Project of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), focused on obtaining legal redress for those forcibly sterilized and establishing regulations to ensure that similar coercions would never happen again. Members of these groups addressed legislative bodies and organized fund-raisers to help support the lawsuits against lacmc (Andrade et al. v. Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center and Madrigal v. Quilligan). T4292.indb 95 T4292.indb 95 7/27/07 7:22:51 AM 7/27/07 7:22:51 AM [3...

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