Forced Sterilization of Native American Women

IHS physicians sterilized at least 25 percent of American Indian women between the ages of fifteen and forty-four. Cheyenne tribal judge Marie Sanchez questioned fifty Cheyenne women and discovered that IHS doctors had sterilized twenty-six of them. 

During the 1960s and 1970s, the United States government, primarily through the Indian Health Service (IHS), oversaw a campaign of forced and coerced sterilization of Native American women. Investigations and researchers estimate that between 25% and 50% of Native women of childbearing age were sterilized between 1970 and 1976 alone. 

Scope and Scale of the Practice

• Total Numbers: Estimates suggest that up to 70,000 Native American women may have been sterilized throughout the 20th century.
• Government Audit: A 1976 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) confirmed that 3,406 women were sterilized without proper consent in just four of the 12 IHS regions between 1973 and 1976.
• Age of Victims: The GAO found that at least 36 women under the age of 21 were sterilized despite a court-ordered moratorium on the practice for that age group. Some reports indicate girls as young as 9 to 11 years old were targeted. 
  
  

Methods of Coercion and Lack of Consent

• Deception: Many women were sterilized during unrelated surgeries, such as appendectomies, without being told.
• Coercion: Physicians threatened women with the loss of welfare benefits or healthcare if they did not "consent" to the procedure.
• Misinformation: Doctors frequently told women the procedures (like tubal ligations) were reversible when they were not.
• Inadequate Consent: Nurses sometimes forced women in active, painful labor or under heavy sedation to sign consent forms. 
  
  

Motivations for the Policy

• Eugenics and Racism: The practices were rooted in early 20th-century eugenics movements that deemed Native Americans "unfit" to reproduce.
• Economic Pressures: Under the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act of 1970, the government subsidized sterilizations for Medicaid and IHS patients. Some doctors believed they were reducing the "tax burden" by limiting births in low-income minority families.
• Paternalism: Many white male physicians believed Native women lacked the intelligence to use other forms of birth control effectively. 
  
  

Resistance and Lasting Impact

• Activism: Native women formed groups like Women of All Red Nations (WARN) in 1974 to expose the abuse and fight for reproductive autonomy.
• Population Decline: In some communities, birth rates plummeted by 75% by the end of the 1970s.
• Intergenerational Trauma: The campaign caused deep-seated distrust of the federal healthcare system that persists in Native communities today.
• Current Recognition: States like New Mexico (2025/2026), Vermont (2023), and California (2024) have recently launched truth commissions or reparations programs to address this history. 
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