Virginia Espino and Renee Tajima-Peña Collection of Sterilization Records, 1975-1979

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Summary

Creators:
Espino, Virginia (Virginia Rose) and Tajima-Pena, Renee
Abstract:
This collection contains court records from the 1970s federal class action lawsuit Madrigal v. Quilligan. The records were gathered by Virginia Espino and Renee Tajima-Peña from the National Archives at Riverside for their documentary, No Más Bebés. The case, Madrigal v. Quilligan, highlighted the coerced sterilization of Latina women at the Los Angeles County-University of Southern California Medical Center. It was initiated by ten Latina women against Dr. E.J. Quilligan and other obstetricians from the hospital. The court records cover the period from June 1975 to April 1979. Although the judge ruled against the women, the case raised public awareness and sparked activism regarding the forced sterilization of minority and non-English-speaking women.
Extent:
2 Linear feet 2 linear feet (1 carton, 2 document boxes)
Language:
Materials are entirely in English.
Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Virginia Espino and Renee Tajima-Peña Collection of Sterilization Records, 16, UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, University of California, Los Angeles.

Background

Scope and content:

This a collection of legal records and court documents from the 1975 federal class action lawsuit, Madrigal v. Quilligan (CV 75-2057 EAC), which brought to light the coerced sterilization of Latina women at Los Angeles County-University of Southern California Medical Center. The case was brought to court by 10 Latina women against E.J. Quilligan, M.D., and other hospital obstetricians. The court records span from June 1975 through April 1979. The judge ruled against the women. However, the case increased public awareness and activism of forced sterilization to minority and non-native speaking women.

Biographical / historical:

Virginia Espino earned her Ph.D. in history at Arizona State University. She currently works as an oral historian at the University of California at Los Angeles Center for Oral History Research, where she is responsible for coordinating projects that document the Southern California Latina/o community. She is responsible for launching two oral history series that explore the Long Civil Rights Movement in Los Angeles, namely, the "Mexican American Civil Rights Pioneers: Historical Roots of an Activist Generation" and "La Batalla Está Aquí": The Chicano Movement in Los Angeles". Her research on the history of coercive sterilization at the Los Angeles-USC Medical Center provided the impetus for the documentary, No Más Bebés, for which she is a producer and lead historian. Espino has conducted extensive primary research and interviews with a number of the principals in the case and has published her research in Las Obreras: Chicana Politics of Work and Family, edited by Vicki L. Ruiz, and Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia.

Renee Tajima-Peña, digital media producer, is an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker. She was selected for the inaugural programs of the BAVC Producers Institute for New Media Technologies and the ITVS-Mozilla Foundation Living Docs Project, where she prototyped interactive documentary projects for online digital platforms. Her film credits include the documentary No Más Bebés and the nationally televised PBS documentaries Calavera Highway, "The Mexico Story" of The New Americans series, My America...or Honk if You Love Buddha, and Who Killed Vincent Chin?, and The Last Beat Movie (Sundance Channel), and The Best Hotel on Skid Row (HBO). Her films have premiered at Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, and festivals around the world. She has been awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship, a USA Broad Fellowship in Media Arts, a Peabody Award, a Dupont-Columbia Award, an Alpert Award in the Arts, an Int'l Documentary Association Achievement Award, and two Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships. She is currently a professor in Asian American Studies at UCLA and the director for EthnoCommunications at UCLA.

Acquisition information:
This collection was donated to the Chicano Studies Research Center by Virginia Espino and Renee Tajima-Peña in 2013.
Processing information:

Processed by Angel Diaz, 2013.

Digital arrangement updated by Yesenia Román, 2024.

Arrangement:

The records were collected from the National Archives at Riverside for use in the documentary, No Más Bebés. This collection is arranged by chronologically by filing date and consists of 2 linear feet of photocopied documents. Original order of materials has been maintained.

Physical location:
COLLECTION STORED OFF-SITE AT SRLF. Advance notice required for access. Contact the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Library and Archive for paging information.
Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

Open for research.

Terms of access:

Copyright has not been assigned to the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. These court documents are public record.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Virginia Espino and Renee Tajima-Peña Collection of Sterilization Records, 16, UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, University of California, Los Angeles.

Location of this collection:
University of California, Los Angeles, Chicano Studies Research Center Library, 193 Haines Hall
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1544, US
Contact:
(310) 206-6052
librarian@chicano.ucla.edu
Website