The U.S. launched a racist eugenics program in Puerto Rico in the 1930s — sterilizing about one third of Puerto Rican women by 1976, many forced or coerced.
It was just one chapter of U.S. colonial eugenics programs and medical experiments targeting women of color. 🧵(1/8)
The U.S. approved forced sterilization in Puerto Rico in 1937 for what it called "overpopulation."
U.S. land theft and exploitation plunged the island into poverty. Health workers coerced people seeking contraception — mostly targeting Black and brown women — into sterilization.
U.S. occupiers transformed Puerto Rico's economy to focus on sugar — for U.S. interests — after invading in 1898.
70% of Puerto Ricans were made landless by 1925. By the 1930s:
▪️ 1 in 3 people unemployed
▪️ 80% of land owned by 2% of population, mostly white
Some clinics refused treatment to women unless they agreed to "la operación" (hysterectomy or tube tying).
Many were falsely told it was reversible or they needed it to get work.
Many clinics that did it were owned by Procter & Gamble heir Clarence Gamble.
In the 1950s, Gamble and U.S. eugenicists began trials for birth control pills in Puerto Rico — targeting poor women, not telling them of side effects or that it was a trial.
Hormones were extreme doses (20x modern pills).
At least 3 women died, their deaths never investigated.
Birth control trials in Puerto Rico were led by Gamble and U.S. scientists John Rock and Gregory Pincus. Gamble believed in wiping out poor people to make way for "fit" populations.
They were backed by Margaret Sanger, who backed eugenics and wiping out "undesirable" people.
Puerto Rico's sterilization law wasn't repealed until the 1960s.
By then, the island had the highest sterilization rate in the world (10x higher than the rest of the U.S.) — a result of forced procedures or coercion.
Studies show many did not know the process was irreversible.
32 U.S. states also had eugenics sterilization laws, many of which targeted mostly BIPOC people.
About 100,000 Black, Indigenous and Latina women were forcibly sterilized in the 1960s and 1970s alone — many coerced by white doctors while seeking health care through Medicaid.
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