The impact of this procedure has been shown in many cases to be traumatic as evidenced by cases of women who were sterilized suing the state many years later on the grounds that their sterilization was a violation of their civil rights. Despite this negative aura around NC's sterilization programs it did afford a rare opportunity for women who had no access to proper health care, or any sort of access to a welfare program a method of birth control, which they sought3.
One of the greatest abuses of sterilization in the US was the targeting of Native American women during the 1970's for involuntary sterilization. This situation has come to be regarded as one of the greatest civil rights violations by the US government in the 20th century. These women were targeted over other racial groups, for three main reasons; first the bulk of these women lived in relative poverty so as with the example from NC they had limited access to proper health care, and no access to welfare systems, this made them very vulnerable, because they had no resources with which to effectively combat this violation of their rights. The second reason why they were targeted over other ethnic groups was that in the late 1960's and the 70's when this was going on the civil rights movement for Blacks had become very popular and powerful, so while previously Black women had been at the mercy of often racially motivated social workers and administrators, there was now a powerful force backing them, so these people could not perpetrate these actions without extreme opposition and repercussions. For the Indian women, however, there was little in the way of support to fight for their rights, in many ways their status as Indians made them particularly vulnerable, because as the public eye was turned to the perceived plight of the Black, the plight of the Indian could slip by relatively unnoticed, and therefore not cause a great public outcry.
