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Forced sterilization campaign in Puerto Rico implemented by the U.S. government.

1950

STER
PR

Over one-third of all women in Puerto Rico will be forcibly sterilized between 1950-1968. The campaign is also known as La Operación by local communities. It is tied to "Operation Bootstrap," a U.S. policy that attempts to boost the Puerto Rican economy by encouraging women to join the workforce. Some women agree to be sterilized because they are told the procedure can be reversed.

Framed as an effective tool of "birth control," sterilization is weaponized against Puerto Rican women as an intervention for population control, which is an ideology rooted in the false belief that Women of Color are the root cause of environmental degradation.

J.M. Stycos will remark: "Many physicians thought, and still think, that contraception methods are too difficult for lower class Puerto Ricans and regarded postpartum sterilization as the most feasible solution to the [population] problems" (CWLU).

Resistance against this massive wave of reproductive violence will be led in the 1960's by Puerto Rican Nationalists and Catholics.