Voices of the Latina Institute: My friend Rosalía and La Operación

By Ligia Rivera, Director of Community Mobilization Programs, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health
“You are getting la operación? You’re going to be sterilized for the rest of your life?� I said to my friend Rosalía recently. “Yes, I will,� she replied. With those three simple words, my friend threw into question all the hours I’ve spent learning and training others on reproductive justice. What else could I have said to a single undocumented mother of two, working a low wage job? Rosalía, like many other immigrant women, came to this country to escape from extreme post-civil war violence, risking her life and the lives of her children by crossing the Rio Grande on an inner tube. After realizing how lucky she was to be living in one of the four US states that offer prenatal care to undocumented, uninsured women, she felt comforted when the medical staff at her local clinic sympathized with her daily struggles and encouraged her to get sterilized as a long term birth control option.
Is this just a new type of coercion meant to strip immigrant women of their reproductive freedom? While some white women still find it hard to convince their doctors to sterilize them, there is a long history of sterilization abuse against women of color. The sterilization of more than a third of women of child-bearing age in Puerto Rico in the 1940s along with the lawsuit against USC-Los Angeles County Medical Center in the 1970s for the coercive sterilization of low-income and primarily Spanish-speaking patients are both a testament to how women of color have experienced sterilization differently. Although significant progress has been made, including federal guidelines to regulate sterilization procedures, I wonder how much oversight still exists and to what extent our movement is aware of the continuing abuses and undercover coercive medical practices.
As I prepare to speak to my friend about the history of sterilization, abuses against women of color and the long-lasting effects of her decision, I examine my own motivations. Am I infringing upon my friend’s right to self-determination with my privileged Latina discourse? I think I am not. I am not only a Latina; I am a proud reproductive justice advocate for whom silence is not an option.