2010s and beyond

In September 2019, whistleblowers working in ICE detention centers stated that a gynecologist had performed coerced hysterectomies on immigrant women. According to the report, the operations were nonconsensual, which caught the attention of international human rights bodies that worked to establish nonconsensual sterilization as a violation of human rights. The U.S. government denied the claims even in the face of two lawsuits from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and Eshman Begnaud, a civil rights and personal injury law firm. The claims were filed under the Federal Tort Claims Act, and the plaintiffs were compensated a combined $533,250 in July 2022. The National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice works to amplify Latinx voices “in order to transform the systems that influence [their] ability to fully make decisions about [their] bodies and [their] lives.” The group also shapes policies at the local and national level, working to improve Latinx reproductive health.

In August 2021, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law a bill to issue reparations to survivors of forced sterilizations in the state from 1909 to 1979. In his speech, Newsom acknowledged eugenics as a “dark chapter in the state’s past” that must be addressed. In 2021, they became the third state along with Virginia and North Carolina to compensate survivors of coerced sterilization. A 2014 California state law banned forced sterilizations as birth control in state prisons and local jails. California’s compensation program has a budget of $7.5 million, $4.5 million of which is to be split evenly among the eligible survivors who apply before December 31, 2023. The remaining $3 million is being used for administration, and Governor Newsom has “earmarked $1 million for plaques to honor the [survivors].” These plaques will be some of the first physical markers honoring the survivors, though advocates in California are working to create a memorial with more significance for survivors.

On May 14, 2022, a mass shooting occurred at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, and documents show that the shooter cited the “Great Replacement Theory” as a motivator. The theory claims that a non-white population, characterized as inferior, is set to displace the white population. The Great Replacement Theory is yet another afterlife of eugenics in that it both classifies people based on racist ideas about inferiority and superiority and spreads fear in hopes of spurring action to eliminate “unfit” peoples from the national “gene pool.”