New Mexico lawmakers have approved an investigation into a history of forced or coerced sterilizations of Native American women tied to the Indian Health Service and other providers, setting up a state-led effort to examine how those procedures were carried out and what effects they had for families.
The measure approved this week would have the state Indian Affairs Department and the Commission on the Status of Women review the “history, scope and continuing impact” of sterilizations of women of color that were forced or coerced by the federal Indian Health Service and other providers. The findings are expected to be delivered to the governor by the end of 2027, according to the legislative action described by the Associated Press.
State Sen. Linda Lopez, one of the sponsors, said it was important for New Mexico “to understand the atrocities that took place within the borders of our state.” Her remarks were part of a broader push by advocates and legislators to confront what they describe as long-lasting harm from medical decisions made without full and informed consent.
The investigation follows a 1970s-era record that has been the focus of advocates’ calls for acknowledgment and accountability. A U.S. Government Accountability Office report in 1976 found that the Indian Health Service sterilized 3,406 women in four of the agency’s 12 service areas between 1973 and 1976, including in Albuquerque. The audit also found that some patients were under the age of 21 and that many patients signed forms that did not comply with federal regulations intended to ensure informed consent.
Advocates say that the GAO audit failed to capture the full reality because researchers decided that interviewing women who had undergone sterilizations “would not be productive,” pointing to a narrow study of cardiac surgical patients in New York that struggled to recall past conversations with doctors. As a result, advocates argue the scope and impact of the sterilizations—beyond the areas and procedures captured in the audit—remains unaccounted for.
The push to revisit the history also rests on survivor accounts described by advocates and lawmakers. Jean Whitehorse, a Navajo Nation citizen, told the story of being admitted to an Indian Health Service hospital in Gallup, New Mexico, in the 1970s for a ruptured appendix and describing a rapid flow of consent forms before emergency surgery. Whitehorse later said that when she returned to the hospital in subsequent years because she was trying to conceive again, she learned she had received a tubal ligation, and she described the news as devastating.
Whitehorse said she did not share her experience publicly for nearly four decades, and that telling her story helped relieve “the shame” and “the guilt.” She later became an advocate for victims, including in 2025 when she testified about the practice to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and called for the United States to formally apologize. Advocates said New Mexico’s investigation could offer other survivors a venue to tell their stories, while also stressing the need to handle testimony carefully.
Rachael Lorenzo, executive director of the Albuquerque-based Indigenous Women Rising, said the topic is “such a taboo topic” and that support must be in place when traumatic stories are told. Lorenzo warned that survivors could be retraumatized if the commission process does not account for the mental and emotional harm that can come with recounting events across generations.
In legislative testimony earlier this month, retired Indian Health Service physician Dr. Donald Clark said he has seen patients in their 20s and 30s seeking contraception while struggling with trust because of stories passed down by grandmothers, mothers and aunts. Clark told lawmakers that the issue is “still an issue that is affecting women’s choice of birth control today.”
Legal scholar Sarah Deer of the University of Kansas School of Law said the accounting of a wider “systemic” pattern of sterilizations has been long overdue. Deer said that outside of a 1976 Government Accountability Office report, the federal government has never acknowledged what she described as a campaign of systemic sterilizations in Native American communities, and she said New Mexico’s investigation could create a path toward accountability—though it could be limited without cooperation from the federal government.