Forced Sterilization: The Dark History of Coercive Reproductive Control

When governments decide who gets to have children, it’s not policy—it’s forced sterilization, the non-consensual surgical removal of reproductive ability, often targeting poor, disabled, or minority populations under false claims of public health. Also known as compulsory sterilization, it’s been used in over 30 countries to control populations, punish "undesirables," and enforce eugenic ideals. This wasn’t fringe extremism. In the U.S., more than 60,000 people were sterilized between 1907 and the 1970s, often without their knowledge or consent. Many were women of color, Indigenous women, people with disabilities, and poor women labeled "feeble-minded" by doctors who believed their genes threatened society.

Eugenics, a pseudoscientific movement that claimed certain human traits could and should be bred out of the population. Also known as racial hygiene, it was taught in universities, funded by foundations like the Carnegie Institution, and backed by Supreme Court rulings—like Buck v. Bell in 1927, where Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. declared, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." The same logic fueled Nazi Germany’s sterilization laws, which American eugenicists openly praised. Even after WWII, forced sterilization continued in the U.S., Canada, Sweden, and Japan. In the 1970s, Native American women were sterilized without informed consent—some as young as 14. In California, over 1,400 women in prisons were sterilized between 2006 and 2013. These weren’t isolated abuses. They were systems.

Reproductive coercion, a pattern of controlling someone’s reproductive choices through pressure, deception, or violence. Also known as birth control sabotage, it’s the modern cousin of forced sterilization—same roots, different tools. Whether it’s doctors pressuring women to get tubal ligations after childbirth, denying contraception to women in foster care, or threatening to take away custody unless a woman agrees to sterilization, the power imbalance hasn’t changed. What’s different now is the resistance. Survivors are speaking up. States are passing laws to ban the practice. And people are finally connecting the dots between forced sterilization, systemic racism, and who gets to control their own body.

What you’ll find in these articles isn’t just history—it’s proof that control over reproduction has always been tied to power. From Victorian doctors pathologizing female desire to modern IVF protocols that ignore consent, the same patterns repeat. You’ll read about how gendered myths silenced women’s autonomy, how medical institutions weaponized science, and how survivors fought back. This isn’t ancient history. It’s the foundation of today’s fights for bodily freedom.