In 1937, Puerto Rico enacted Law 116, the last eugenics sterilization law passed under United States territorial jurisdiction. Soon after, a program endorsed by the U.S. government began sending health department officials to rural parts of the island advocating for sterilization. The Puerto Rican government fully supported this program, as it attributed overpopulation to the island’s high levels of poverty and unemployment. With the growth of American corporations on Puerto Rican soil and factory work, they also wanted to integrate women into the workforce more fully and child bearing was seen as an obstacle to that. In fact, sterilization efforts were..Read More

California Proposition 187 (also known as the Save Our State (SOS) initiative) was a 1994 ballot initiative to establish a state-run citizenship screening system and prohibit illegal immigrants from using non-emergency health care, public education, and other services in the State of California. Voters passed the proposed law at a referendum on November 8, 1994. The law was challenged in a legal suit and found unconstitutional by a federal district court. In 1999, Governor Gray Davis halted state appeals of this ruling.