New Mexico lawmakers approve investigation into forced sterilization of Native women

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New Mexico lawmakers have approved an investigation into forced and coerced sterilizations of Native American women and how the practice has affected families over time, the Associated Press reported. The measure directs the state Indian Affairs Department and the Commission on the Status of Women to examine the history, scope and continuing impact of the sterilizations, and to report findings to the governor by the end of 2027.

The legislation was sponsored by state Sen. Linda Lopez, who said it was important for the state to understand what she described as atrocities that took place within New Mexico’s borders. Lawmakers also said the inquiry is meant to look at forced and coerced sterilizations connected to the Indian Health Service and other providers, AP reported.

The AP report said the sterilizations occurred in the 1970s under a federal health-care system for Native Americans. It described that the U.S. agency that provides care to Native Americans sterilized thousands of women without their full and informed consent, depriving them of the opportunity to start or grow families.

The report included the story of Jean Whitehorse, a Navajo Nation citizen who said she was admitted to an Indian Health Service hospital in Gallup, New Mexico, in 1972 with a ruptured appendix. Whitehorse said she remembered “extreme pain” and said providers presented her with consent forms before emergency surgery, adding, “The nurse held the pen in my hand. I just signed on the line.”

Whitehorse said that when she later returned to the hospital while trying to conceive a second child, she learned she had received a tubal ligation. She said the news devastated her, contributed to the breakdown of her relationship, and sent her into alcoholism. She later became a public advocate, telling the AP, “Each time I tell my story, it relieves the shame, the guilt,” and saying, “It’s the government that should be ashamed of what they did to us.”

The AP report said advocates had long been sounding alarms about women who entered Indian Health Service clinics and hospitals to give birth or for other procedures and later found they were unable to conceive. It said the activist group Women of All Red Nations (WARN), an offshoot of the American Indian Movement, was formed in part to expose the practice.

The AP report also described earlier allegations by Choctaw and Cherokee physician Connie Redbird Uri, who reviewed Indian Health Service records and alleged that the agency sterilized as many as 25% of its female patients of childbearing age. Uri’s allegations helped prompt a U.S. Government Accountability Office audit, the AP said; the GAO 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, and that some patients were under age 21. The GAO also found that most patients signed forms that the GAO said did not comply with federal regulations meant to ensure informed consent.

At the same time, advocates told the AP that the full scope and impact remained unaccounted for because of limits in the audit. The AP report said GAO researchers determined that interviewing women who had undergone sterilizations “would not be productive,” citing a single study of cardiac surgical patients in New York who struggled to recall past conversations with doctors, and advocates argued that the narrow purview of the audit left key details outside the record.

In addition to documenting the historical account, New Mexico’s measure would also create a venue for survivors to be heard, the AP reported. But advocates warned that such efforts must be handled carefully. Rachael Lorenzo, executive director of the Albuquerque-based sexual and reproductive health organization Indigenous Women Rising, said the topic was taboo and that “It’s such a taboo topic. There’s a lot of support that needs to happen when we tell these traumatic stories,” according to the AP.

The AP report also included testimony from retired Indian Health Service physician Dr. Donald Clark at a New Mexico legislative hearing earlier this month. Clark told lawmakers he had seen patients in their 20s and 30s seeking contraception but not trusting they would not be irreversibly sterilized, adding that stories were passed down by grandmothers, mothers and aunts. Clark said, “It’s still an issue that is affecting women’s choice of birth control today.”

Sarah Deer, a professor at the University of Kansas School of Law, told the AP that New Mexico’s investigation is long overdue and that “The women in these communities carry these stories.” The AP also said Deer viewed the New Mexico inquiry as potentially paving the way for accountability, but she warned that without cooperation from the federal government, the commission’s ability to carry out fact-finding could be limited.