1_image-largeThere are a num­ber of exam­ples in post Civ­il War Amer­i­ca of eugenic pro­grams but none as effec­tive and wide­spread as the mass female ster­il­iza­tion in Puer­to Rico. Begin­ning in the years fol­low­ing WW I, a pro­gram was ini­ti­at­ed by the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment, the med­ical com­mu­ni­ty and the local gov­ern­ment of Puer­to Rico, to name a few, which result­ed in the unprece­dent­ed ster­il­iza­tion of 13 of the female pop­u­la­tion by 1965, and the con­tin­ued use of ster­il­iza­tion on a broad scale by Puer­to Rican women as a form of birth con­trol