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Description
Between 1971 and 1974, hundreds of women of Mexican descent were sterilized without their knowledge or consent at the Los Angeles County USC Medical Center, a federally funded teaching hospital. With the support of then-recently graduated lawyer Antonia Hernández and the feminist organization Comisión Feminil, ten women came forward and testified on their experiences in the landmark civil rights case Madrigal v Quilligan. This thesis attempts to uncover the ways access to public health has been racialized and gendered and the ways the women who testified embodied experiences of trauma, healing, and community. By exploring court testimony and amplifying the women’s voices, this thesis hopes to expand the historiography of reproductive justice advocacy by showing how testimony and access can be used as a strategy for resistance and disrupt systems of whiteness. Pairing court testimonies and women’s narratives with traditions of storytelling, community pláticas (conversations), and curanderismo (holistic healing) – this paper demonstrates the way public health has rejected and problematized bodies of color and nonwesternized ways of healing and thinking. This research engages with critical race theory, embodied knowledge, and oppositional consciousness to explore disparities in access to public health and reproductive rights. Through the analysis of these sources, this work critically engages with systems of whiteness embedded in law and medicine that attempt to place women of color under structures of reproductive bondage. This work fits into the growing field of Chicana feminist studies by exploring the dangerous implications of medical abuses on women of color alongside broader histories of power and care within the Chicano/a Rights Movement.
