MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
A woman at the center of a landmark lawsuit on reproductive rights has died. Dolores Madrigal was 39 years old in the early 1970s when she was sterilized by the doctors who had just delivered her baby. She only later realized what had happened and became the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit with 10 other Mexican American women who said they were coerced into having their tubes tied. NPR's Adrian Florido has this remembrance.
ADRIAN FLORIDO, BYLINE: Not long after having her second son in 1973, Dolores Madrigal heard a story on the radio about women at Los Angeles' main county hospital. They hadn't realized doctors had tied their fallopian tubes right after delivering their babies. Madrigal rushed to the hospital to find out if it had happened to her. It had. Realizing she'd been sterilized brought Madrigal's world tumbling down.
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DOLORES MADRIGAL: (Speaking Spanish).
FLORIDO: "It's like I went crazy," she said in the 2015 documentary "No Mas Bebes." "I had a lot of hate, resentment. All I did was cry. I didn't eat. I suffered so much." Soon, a couple of young Mexican American civil rights lawyers asked her to join a class-action lawsuit.
VIRGINIA ESPINO: She was really enthusiastic about participating.
FLORIDO: Virginia Espino made the documentary about Madrigal's lawsuit. The attorneys believed doctors were motivated by prejudicial views about large Mexican families and alleged they were getting women to sign sterilization consent forms that they didn't understand while they were in the throes of labor. Madrigal became lead plaintiff.
ESPINO: And she had a very strong belief about the injustice that was committed against her, and so she wanted to stand up against it because she felt it was wrong.
FLORIDO: Backed by federal funds, LA's county hospital, which served poor patients, routinely performed tubal ligations. Doctors denied any women had been coerced. At a press conference in 1976, Madrigal's attorney, Antonia Hernandez, said she and the other plaintiffs were coerced.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ANTONIA HERNANDEZ: We are suing for noncompliance or nonenforcement, nonmonitoring of the sterilization regulations, also the consent forms in Spanish and at a reading level that the individual can understand.
FLORIDO: They lost the lawsuit. The federal judge ruled that it was a communication breakdown between Spanish-speaking patients and English-speaking doctors and that, quote, "the cultural background of these particular women contributed to the problem." But the case did spark change. The government began providing Spanish-language sterilization consent forms and hired bilingual counselors for county hospitals. The ordeal scarred Dolores Madrigal and her family for life. Here's her son, Oren Madrigal.
OREN MADRIGAL: You know, my mom wanted to have a big family, you know, like a typical old-school Mexican woman, you know? Like, unfortunately, like, she tied a lot of her self-worth to her not being able to, you know, have any more babies, you know? It was a great trauma, you know? It was - she tried to bury it.
FLORIDO: But he says she found ways to cope and power through. Filmmaker Virginia Espino says Madrigal's legacy has been somewhat overshadowed by the mainstream women's movements fight for reproductive and abortion rights.
ESPINO: Dolores Madrigal - she was robbed of her right to bear children. And so she's a historical figure in that movement for bodily autonomy that we're still fighting for today.
FLORIDO: Madrigal died in Las Vegas last month, peacefully, at the age of 90. Her son Oren called her his hero. Adrian Florido, NPR News, Los Angeles.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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