The Finding Aid for the Virginia Espino and Renee Tajima-Pena Collection of Sterilization Records is a register provided by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center and processed by Angel Diaz. The collection is made up of court records following the 1970s Madrigal v. Quilligan federal class action lawsuit. The Madrigal v. Quilligan lawsuit exposed the coerced sterilization of a number of Latina women by the L.A. County University of Southern California Medical center. The case followed 10 Latina women versus E.J. Quilligan (an M.D.) and other involved obstetricians. The compilation of records span the summer of 1975, up until the spring of 1979. While the judge would ultimately rule against the women, the case would attract public attention and prompt activism related to the forced sterilization of minority and non-English speaking women.
The collection is stored in the Chicano Studies archive, and is made up of two series. The first series features court documents from 1975-1979. The second series includes an oral history of the case, with several audio recordings and cassette tapes. The finding aid for the Virginia Espino and Renee Tajima-Pena Collection functions as an inventory of sorts for the Madrigal v. Quilligan case. The finding aid offers researchers a guide to navigating a potentially esoteric and largely unexplored narrative. The presence of audio recordings and oral reports may offer listeners a personal account of this history– presenting researchers with the individuated and acute details often left out of historic retellings. On the flipside, if I were to utilize only the contents of the finding aid, I may desire a greater historic framework for assessing this singular event. Specifically, how this might relate to the sterilization of Native American women in the 1970s, or the more recent coerced sterilization of California female inmates in the 21st century. To think of the Madrigal v. Quilligan case as an isolated incident would mean denying a profound history of eugenics and forced sterilization of marginalized women in the U.S. Further, if one were to focus exclusively on the contents of the finding aid, the extent of the research would be contained to the number of legal participants and documented cases. I don’t think it would be an error on my part to assume that the infringement upon the reproductive rights of disenfranchised women extends far beyond the 10 women involved in the Madrigal v. Quilligan legal battle.
Excellent post! You laid out a very clear description of the archive and then offered great examples to what is missing – a contextualization within a greater historical (often marginalized) narrative. Wonderful work!
I thought you made some really interesting points about how it would be detrimental to treat Madrigal v. Quilligan as an isolated incident and instead should use it as one example in the historical narrative of forced sterilization of marginalized women in the US. I wonder if the special collections have other collections of similar documents? Great post!
I believe that you did a very good job in this blog post regarding the forced sterilization of women. The background you provided helped me and others who didn’t research this topic become familiar with the case itself and the subject matter of the finding aid. You also did an exceptional job when it came to proposing possible narratives that could arise from this finding aid. All in all, I believe that this was a very well done and well thought out post.
This post brings up a really important point that these documents are only one piece of a larger, perhaps more hidden narrative of the rights of minority women. I also liked that you mentioned the different types of narrative that can be found from the two series of this collection. I agree that a researcher could find different information from court documents and oral narratives.
Risha Sanikommu