Directed by Renee Tajima-Peña and produced by Virgina Espino, No Mas Bebes is an eye-opening documentary film that has inspired both my personal research and the basis for this primary source analysis. Created in June of 2015, No Mas Bebes is a brilliant documentary that not only exposes the truth behind the sterilization abuse that was taking place within the Los Angeles County General Hospital in the 60s and 70s, but it also provides an in-depth analysis into the racist, anti-immigrant discourse and the intersections of gender and race that allowed for this injustice to unfold. Using a variety of interviews from the abused Latinx women themselves, as well as from the young Chicanx lawyer, Antonia Hernandez, who helped file a lawsuit and the
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As a result, in the process of white middle class women advocating for their rights and making their demands heard, women of color, mainly Latinx women, were increasingly silenced and pushed off to the margins, regardless of the fact that many of these women were being sterilized without their consent and, thus, being stripped of their reproductive autonomy and agency—both of which were aspects that white feminists agreed with but lacked interest due to racist beliefs. Therefore, as a response to the lack of recognition of the sterilization abuse that many women of color, primarily Latinx women, underwent in the 60s and 70s, Tajima-Peña, Espino, and the rest of their team came together to create No Mas Bebes—all in an effort to give voice, space, and power to the Latinx women that were permanently sterilized against their …show more content…
As I had mentioned before, the white feminists of the 60s and 70s were mainly concerned with acquiring rights that would facilitate their ability to exercise their right not to have children, such as the right to birth control and abortions. However, in addition to the more common forms of birth control, such as the pill or IUD, many white feminists also considered voluntary sterilization as another crucial method of birth control and, thus, felt the need to protect this method and right, regardless of the harm that it was causing Latinx women under the care of racist doctors. As Loretta J. Ross and Rickie Solinger explain in their book, Reproduction Justice: An Introduction, “…easy access to sterilization was an important demand [for white women]. Generally white women did not understand, and often did not try to understand, that historical and contemporary sterilization abuse of women of color meant that these women had an entirely different perspective on the issue” (52). In other words, many white women felt so strongly about maintaining their right to access voluntary sterilization whenever they’d like that they did not consider the other side of the argument—that women should also have the
As a result, in the process of white middle class women advocating for their rights and making their demands heard, women of color, mainly Latinx women, were increasingly silenced and pushed off to the margins, regardless of the fact that many of these women were being sterilized without their consent and, thus, being stripped of their reproductive autonomy and agency—both of which were aspects that white feminists agreed with but lacked interest due to racist beliefs. Therefore, as a response to the lack of recognition of the sterilization abuse that many women of color, primarily Latinx women, underwent in the 60s and 70s, Tajima-Peña, Espino, and the rest of their team came together to create No Mas Bebes—all in an effort to give voice, space, and power to the Latinx women that were permanently sterilized against their …show more content…
As I had mentioned before, the white feminists of the 60s and 70s were mainly concerned with acquiring rights that would facilitate their ability to exercise their right not to have children, such as the right to birth control and abortions. However, in addition to the more common forms of birth control, such as the pill or IUD, many white feminists also considered voluntary sterilization as another crucial method of birth control and, thus, felt the need to protect this method and right, regardless of the harm that it was causing Latinx women under the care of racist doctors. As Loretta J. Ross and Rickie Solinger explain in their book, Reproduction Justice: An Introduction, “…easy access to sterilization was an important demand [for white women]. Generally white women did not understand, and often did not try to understand, that historical and contemporary sterilization abuse of women of color meant that these women had an entirely different perspective on the issue” (52). In other words, many white women felt so strongly about maintaining their right to access voluntary sterilization whenever they’d like that they did not consider the other side of the argument—that women should also have the