{"id":11022,"date":"2015-10-20T18:23:59","date_gmt":"2015-10-21T01:23:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/?post_type=films&#038;p=11022"},"modified":"2025-05-20T11:23:06","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T18:23:06","slug":"no-mas-bebes","status":"publish","type":"films","link":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/documentaries\/no-mas-bebes\/","title":{"rendered":"No M\u00e1s Beb\u00e9s"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>No M\u00e1s Beb\u00e9s<\/em><\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> tells the story of a little-known but landmark event in reproductive justice, when a small group of Mexican immigrant women sued county doctors, the state, and the U.S. government after they were sterilized while giving birth at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center during the late 1960s and early 1970s.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Marginalized and fearful, many of these mothers spoke no English, and charged that they had been coerced into tubal ligation \u2014 having their tubes tied \u2014\u00a0by doctors during the late stages of labor. Often the procedure was performed after asking the mothers under duress.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The mothers\u2019 cause was eventually taken up by a young Chicana lawyer armed with hospital records secretly gathered by a whistle-blowing doctor. In their landmark 1975 civil rights lawsuit, Madrigal v. Quilligan, they argued that a woman\u2019s right to bear a child is guaranteed under the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The filmmakers spent five\u00a0years tracking down sterilized mothers and witnesses. Most were reluctant at first to come forward, but ultimately agreed to tell their story. Set against a debate over the impact of Latino immigration and overpopulation, and the birth of a movement for Chicana rights and reproductive choice, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No M\u00e1s Beb\u00e9s <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">revisits a powerful story that still resonates today.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Virginia Espino<\/strong> (Producer) conducted original research on the Madrigal case that formed the basis for <em>No M\u00e1s Beb\u00e9s<\/em>. Her work was published in <em>Las Obreras: Chicana Politics of Work and Family<\/em>, edited by Vicki L. Ruiz, and <em>Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia<\/em>. She is the Program Coordinator for Latina\/o History at the UCLA Center for Oral History Research where she has interviewed the leading figures in contemporary Mexican American history.\u00a0Espino received her PhD in History from Arizona State University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No M\u00e1s Beb\u00e9s tells the story of a little-known but landmark event in reproductive justice, when a small group of Mexican immigrant women sued county doctors, the state, and the U.S. government after they were sterilized while giving birth at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Marginalized and fearful, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":11082,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"topic":[1260,1264,1227],"class_list":["post-11022","films","type-films","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","topic-civil-rights-2","topic-race-ethnicity","topic-women-and-girls"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>No M\u00e1s Beb\u00e9s | Documentary about Madrigal v. Quilligan Coerced Sterilization Case | Independent Lens | PBS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"No M\u00e1s Beb\u00e9s is the story of Mexican mothers who claim they were coerced into sterilization procedures at a Los Angeles hospital in late 1960s and \u201870s.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/documentaries\/no-mas-bebes\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"No M\u00e1s Beb\u00e9s | Documentary about Madrigal v. 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