History We Don’t Know:

The forced sterilization of Puerto Ricans, especially Puerto Rican women, was shockingly widespread, and remains one of the most underacknowledged chapters of U.S. colonial policy.

Scope and Scale

• By the late 1960s, over one-third of Puerto Rican women of childbearing age had been sterilized—the highest rate of sterilization in the world at the time.
• The practice was so common it became known locally as “La Operación”, referring to the tubal ligation procedure that many women underwent, often without full informed consent.

Motivations Behind the Policy

• U.S. colonial governance framed Puerto Rican overpopulation as a threat to economic development and social stability.
• Eugenics ideology—rooted in racism and classism—portrayed poor, dark-skinned, working-class Puerto Ricans as “unfit” to reproduce.
• Economic coercion played a major role: sterilization was often promoted as a condition for employment in U.S.-funded factories or as a form of birth control in clinics that offered few alternatives.

Intersectional Harm

• The policy disproportionately targeted Afro-Puerto Rican and working-class women, reinforcing racialized and gendered hierarchies.
• Many women were misled or pressured into sterilization, with some believing it was reversible or required for medical care.
• The long-term impact included generational trauma, loss of reproductive autonomy, and cultural disruption.

Legacy and Resistance

• The 1982 documentary La Operación exposed the scale and emotional toll of the sterilization campaign, amplifying voices of survivors.
• Scholars and activists have since framed this history as part of a broader pattern of reproductive control and colonial violence.
• Today, it informs movements for reproductive justice, decolonization, and Land Back, especially among Puerto Rican feminists and abolitionist organizers.

Written by Debbie Deland / vp@flnow.org