Mexicana Reaction Paper

On Wednesday September 23rd, I attended Hispanic Heritage Month Honoring Latina, Hispanic, and Latin American Women. During this presentation the documentary “No más bebés” was played and then a discussion followed. Dr. Julia McReynolds-Pérez (UW-L Department of Sociology) and Dr. Omar Granados (UW-L Department of Modern Languages) led the discussion. The documentary focused on an investigation of the sterilization of Mexican American Women at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center during the 1960s and 1970s.
Many Chicana women went to the USC Medical Center to have a baby and came out not able to have anymore. The women would be in the middle of labor and the doctor would say they had to sign the papers for an emergency cesarean section

Quilligan tried in the federal court system. The case is named Quilligan because at first the lawsuit prosecuted the main doctor. Because they sued the doctor for personal grievances, rather than a case against the institutional biases. At the end of the legal case, the women who shared their stories received nothing. But the lawsuits led to numerous new policy and procedures. Hospital forms became required to be translated into multiple languages, so patients can understand procedures completely. The judge sided with the county hospital, in favor of the doctors. Sadly the judge argued that the doctor was not at fault, if he thought he could help the perceived overpopulation problem. In the end the women were okay with the results because they did not have to win to make a

At the beginning I fit in the reintegration stage, I though I’m just one person and racism as a whole issue had nothing to do with me, but I still noticed the white preferment and entitlement. Now I feel I’m in the Pseudo-Independent Stage, and in the process of unlearning racism. This documentary made me feel self-conscious and guilty for my own and others whiteness. During the film it brought up these feelings because the doctors interviewed believed they had done nothing wrong. The doctors feeling of white superiority, got in their way from seeing the wrong in their actions. How could someone think that they have the right to take away other peoples’ rights? This made me think of in class when we discussed methods of maintaining dominance. In the case of the film, the doctors noticed they had more power than the Hispanic women. I feel that the doctors felt that the hierarchy of race was being threatened because Hispanics continued having more children. The doctors feared that Hispanics may became the majority of the population. Then whites would lose power and