1970s
The rebranding of eugenics continued through the 1970s. In 1973, the American Eugenics Society changed its name to the Society for the Study of Social Biology. However, while they changed their name, they explicitly stated that this “does not coincide with any change of [our] interests or policies.”
The 1970s saw an increase in the efforts towards forced sterilizations, and the main communities targeted were Black, Latina, and Native American women. Between 1973 and 1976, four Indian Health Service regions forcibly sterilized 3,406 Native American women. Despite a court-ordered moratorium prohibiting the sterilization of women under the age of 21, the report shows that 36 women under 21 were forcibly sterilized. In 1971, Choctaw-Cherokee physician Dr. Connie Pinkerton-Uri, conducted an independent study that indicated that 1 in 4 Native American women had been sterilized without their consent.
In July 1976, ten Mexican-American women filed a civil rights class action lawsuit Madrigal v. Quilligan against the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center for its use of involuntary sterilization. These sterilizations represent a fraction of the unauthorized sterilizations against women for whom English is their second language. One of the plaintiffs, Dolores Madrigal, claimed that "under the severe pain of labor, and after being assured that the operation could be easily reversed, she signed these forms and was sterilized." The lawyers, Antonia Hernandez and Charles Navarette, collaborated with a feminist organization named Comisión Feminil and argued their case on the basis of Roe v. Wade, claiming women’s reproductive rights to procreate and to an abortion.
On June 7, 1978, the California federal court ruled in favor of the medical center, stating that the language barrier and miscommunication between the doctors and Mexican American women led to the unwanted sterilizations. Despite the case’s result, it influenced the California Department of Health to implement new sterilization procedures and annul their sterilization law, a law that allowed more than 20,000 unauthorized sterilizations to occur.
The Relf v. Weinberger case, filed on July 17, 1973, defined reproductive freedom for women of color. After the three Relf sisters, aged 16, 14, and 12 were taken in to have an injection of a non-FDA approved drug, the nurses sterilized the youngest sisters. The Relf sisters' mother was told that the girls would receive “some shots,” and signed a consent form. After the Relf sisters filed a complaint with the help of the Southern Poverty Law Center, new guidelines to define voluntary sterilization were created, “but the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia found that these guidelines were insufficient to ensure that sterilizations would be voluntary.” This case marked the first time a federal court acknowledged and condemned the practice of involuntary sterilization. Relf v. Weinberger also catalyzed a shift in collective thinking around reproductive freedom in that “the concept of reproductive freedom evolved to include freedom to reproduce as well as freedom from unwanted pregnancies.”