California looking to pay reparations to 600 people who were forcibly sterilized by the state

The California government is looking to pay reparations to about 600 people alive today who were sterilized, sometimes against their will, as part of state programs.

The state is looking to provide $15,000 to people in two groups: those sterilized by the government during the so-called eugenics movement that peaked during the 1930s and a smaller group who were victimized while in state prisons about a decade ago.

But after a year of searching, the state has only approved 51 people for payments out of 310 applicants due in part to problems verifying information. 

There’s one year left before the $4.5 million program shuts down and state officials have denied 103 people, closed three incomplete applications and are processing 153 others. Many records needed to verify applications have been lost or destroyed over the years, officials said.

California in 2021 was the third state to approve a reparations program for forced sterilizations, after North Carolina and Virginia. But California was the first state to also include more recent victims from its state prison system.

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The eugenics movement sought to prevent some people with mental illness or physical disabilities from being able to have children and California had the nation’s largest forced sterilization program, sterilizing about 20,000 people beginning in 1909. 

The state did not repeal its eugenics law until 1979.

A state audit found that 144 women were sterilized in California prisons between 2005 and 2013 with little or no evidence they were counseled or offered alternative treatments. State lawmakers responded by passing a law in 2014 to ban sterilizations in prison for birth control purposes while still allowing for other medically necessary procedures.

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Of the 45 people approved for reparations so far, just three were sterilized during the eugenics era and prison sterilization victims have been much easier to find due to records being on file.

"We try to find all the information we can and sometimes we just have to hope that somebody maybe can find more detailed information on their own," said Lynda Gledhill, executive officer of the California Victims’ Compensation Board that oversees the program. "We’re just sometimes not able to verify what happened."

One of the victims, Moonlight Pulido, was serving a life sentence for attempted murder when a prison doctor told her in 2005 she needed to have growths removed that could be cancer. She signed a form and went through surgery but later noticed something didn’t feel right and was told by a nurse she was given a full hysterectomy where her uterus and cervix were removed.

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Pulido was shocked. She was 41-years-old at the time, already had children and said the doctor took her right to start another family which was something that deeply affected her.

"I’m Native American, and we as women, we’re grounded to Mother Earth. We’re the only life-givers, we’re the only ones that can give life and he stole that blessing from me," she said. "I felt like less than a woman."

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Pulido was released on parole in January 2022. Working with the advocacy group Coalition for Women Prisoners, she applied for reparations and was approved for a $15,000 payment.

"I sat there and I looked at it and I cried. I cried because I have never had that much money ever in my life," she said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report