New Mexico lawmakers plan to push for a memorial to study the scope and ongoing impacts of the practice on Indigenous women and women of color in New Mexico. (Patrick Lohmann/Source NM)
Decades ago, a medical emergency brought Jean Whitehorse to an Indian Health Service facility in Gallup. There, she says, she was coerced into signing a form for a procedure she later learned left her unable to have more children.
Whitehorse (Navajo) is one of an untold number of Indigenous women who have been sterilized in the U.S. without their consent…