In early spring 2012, a group of scholars and activists came together out of a common concern to confront the legacy of eugenics in California and its implications for the present. The group has formed the Coalition to Address California’s Eugenic History, and held a strategy meeting and public event in August 2012 at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.

The Coalition has crafted a statement titled “Coerced Sterilizations and Eugenics in California: Historical Summary and the Need for Action” that summarizes the history of eugenic sterilization in California and surveys efforts in other jurisdictions to commemorate human rights abuses. 

The first wave of coerced sterilization procedures in California – some 20,000 of them from roughly 1909 to the early 1950s – were explicitly state sponsored, taking place in institutions such as homes for the “feeble-minded.” The second wave occurred in county hospitals, particularly in Los Angeles County during the 1960s and 1970s, targeting mostly poor women of color. Since the statement was written, we learned from prison advocates that they have obtained documentation of several hundred coerced sterilizations occurring in California women’s prisons over the past few years.

The group’s aim was to bring to light this history and its implications for contemporary practices, including those related to human genetic and reproductive technologies.