{"id":5085000,"date":"2016-01-14T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-01-14T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ctlatinonews.com\/latinas-sterilized-unknowingly-in-a-los-angeles-hospital-tell-their-story\/"},"modified":"2016-01-14T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-01-14T05:00:00","slug":"latinas-sterilized-unknowingly-in-a-los-angeles-hospital-tell-their-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/2016\/01\/14\/latinas-sterilized-unknowingly-in-a-los-angeles-hospital-tell-their-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Latinas Sterilized Unknowingly In A Los Angeles Hospital Tell Their Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maria Hurtado, a plaintiff in a 1978 case about alleged coercive sterilization, and her husband, Salvador, in circa 2014. (Virginia Espino) via WashingtonPost.com
\n 
\n 
\nThe doctors and nurses told Melvina Hern\u00e1ndez that the decision\u00a0was a matter of life or death for her and for her baby ready to be born: She needed an emergency Caesarean section. They also wanted her consent for one other procedure.
\nThe 23-year-old mother-to-be was lying in the maternity ward of Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center four decades ago. She didn\u2019t speak English. She said she couldn\u2019t sign any papers because her husband wasn\u2019t there. The couple planned to have at least two or three children.
\n“If you don\u2019t sign, you\u2019ll die,” the nurse said, waving a paper printed in English, as Hern\u00e1ndez recalls in a new documentary. “Then the nurse grabbed my hand and signed my name.”
\nThe child was born healthy, and Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s life was changed in more ways than one:
\n“I didn\u2019t know I was sterilized until four years later.”
\n“No M\u00e1s Beb\u00e9s”<\/span><\/a> \u2014 “No More Babies” \u2014 tells the story of a nearly forgotten battle for reproductive rights that exposed numerous examples of women having their fallopian tubes tied allegedly against their will, or without proper consent, in the Los Angeles hospital in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The women tended to be poor Spanish-speaking immigrants from Mexico.
\nDirector Renee Tajima-Pe\u00f1a<\/span> is scheduled to talk about the film after a screening in the AFI Docs Film Series at the Landmark E Street Cinema on Monday at 7 p.m. (AFI is no longer accepting RSVPs to the event.) The film will be broadcast as part of the Independent Lens series on PBS stations starting Feb. 1.
\nIn addition to the mothers, the characters in the documentary include hospital whistle-blower Bernard Rosenfeld, the doctor who smuggled out medical records that helped a young lawyer named Antonia Hern\u00e1ndez and her colleagues launch a class-action lawsuit in 1975, Madrigal v. Quilligan<\/em>. The case made novel use of the recently decided Roe v. Wade<\/em>. Today Roe connotes abortion, but the Supreme Court\u2019s decision in Roe\u00a0covered\u00a0the range of a woman\u2019s reproductive choices. Relying in part on Roe, the lawyers in Los Angeles\u00a0argued that their clients were being denied their
\nTo read full story: https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/arts-and-entertainment\/wp\/2016\/01\/10\/sterilized-against-their-will-in-a-los-angeles-hospital-latinas-tell-the-story-in-a-new-film\/<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The doctors and nurses told Melvina Hern\u00e1ndez that the decision\u00a0was a matter of life or death for her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","ghostkit_customizer_options":"","ghostkit_custom_css":"","ghostkit_custom_js_head":"","ghostkit_custom_js_foot":"","ghostkit_typography":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[121,1009,1010],"tags":[1008],"ppma_author":[565],"class_list":["post-5085000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-ma-health","category-ri-health","tag-latina-sterilizationlos-angles-and-hispanics"],"acf":[],"mb":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Jermaine Smith","author_link":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/author\/jay\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"    The doctors and nurses told Melvina Hern\u00e1ndez that the decision\u00a0was a matter of life or death for her […]","authors":[{"term_id":565,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"news-editor","display_name":"News Editor","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"mfb_rest_fields":["title","uagb_featured_image_src","uagb_author_info","uagb_comment_info","uagb_excerpt","authors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5085000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5085000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5085000\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5085000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5085000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5085000"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=5085000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}