Black fabrics have been pulled back, uncovering the steel and concrete artwork below and revealing the words of some of the 240, mostly Latina, mothers forcibly sterilized at LAC+USC Medical Center more than 50 years ago. years old: “If you speak English, they treat you one way. If you don’t speak English they treat you another way.
Their words are now inscribed in curved walls that surround a steel floor sculpture engraved with flowers symbolizing fertility and depictions of Mexican leather artwork, all in honor of the resilience of hundreds of mothers who faced injustice and heartache decades ago.
In a somber unveiling ceremony Monday on a grassy courtyard at the LAC+USC hospital, county officials gave the public the first look at “Sobrevivir,” an art installation by Cambodian-American artist Phung Huynh of Los Angeles in preparation since 2018, since the County Board of Supervisors issued a motion containing an apology.
Meaning “to survive and stay alive,” Huynh described her work, Sobrevivir, as a lifelong apology and somber reminder of the forced sterilizations performed on 240 mostly low-income Mexican-American immigrant women. They gave birth between 1968 and 1974 at County Hospital and then underwent postpartum sterilization, usually in the form of tubal ligation.
The county’s investigations raised serious questions about whether the women understood what was being asked of them due to language and cultural barriers, and concluded that the women’s consent may not have been informed.
First District Supervisor Hilda Solis, who spearheaded the project, said the story hit her hard and years later is still relevant. “Many of the 240 women only realized later that they had lost their reproductive rights. It was an attack on their freedom, which we see again with the Supreme Court’s decision to end the constitutional right to abortion,” Solis said.
Women, community members, doctors, nurses, county officials and the press stood on the edge of the artwork to take photos and videos of the huge artwork and plaque adjoining. The moment “was a long time coming,” Huynh said in an interview ahead of the ceremony.
“It’s a haunting story,” she said at the end of her talk. “And the dark stories will continue to haunt us unless we do something about it. So this is the beginning of an effort to repair and heal.
These sterilizations began in California with a 1909 eugenics law that allowed doctors in state institutions to operate on people deemed unfit to have children. Often targeted were so-called “undesirable populations”, including the disabled, the mentally ill, the poor, and people of color. More than 20,000 people, including some teenage girls, were victimized before the law was repealed in 1979.
Latina women were 59% more likely to be sterilized than non-Latin women, Solis said.
Jorge Orozco, CEO of LAC+ USC Medical Center, said it was the first hospital to apologize for forced sterilizations, even though many hospitals and other institutions have performed the procedure.
Even after the law was repealed, a Center for Investigative Reporting analysis and a state follow-up audit found that more than 140 pregnant women, mostly black and Latina, had undergone tubal ligations after giving birth in two California prisons between 2005 and 2013. .
“This hospital has deeply harmed our Latino community, a community it was meant to serve,” Orozco said. “This piece of art will start our healing process. It is an atonement for the severe harm we have caused and the need to restore community trust.
Hospital chaplain Elizabeth Gibbs Zehnder said that without Huynh’s work, the mothers’ words and their stories would have been forgotten. “Their lyrics are there for God and everyone to see,” she said.
Huynh is known for her “Child Donuts” exhibit, in which she stenciled the faces of shopkeepers and waiters onto hot pink donut boxes to illustrate the assimilation and cultural experiences of Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees who moved to each other. resettled in the United States.
She said four different quilts, honoring women who have been sterilized, will soon be installed somewhere inside the hospital.
LA County seeks reparations for 1968-1974 forced sterilizations at LAC+USC Med Center