U.S. government’s proclaimed war on poverty.
That year, President Lyndon Johnson initiated
his ambitious multibillion-dollar Great Society
agenda, which would lead to Medicare, Medic-
aid, Head Start, the distribution of food stamps
and other programs in an eff ort to end poverty
and hunger, reduce crime, abolish inequality and
racial barriers and improve the environment.
Also under the auspices of the O.E.O., in 1967 the
U.S. government created its family-planning pro-
gram, which was intended to help poor people
prevent unwanted births through contraception
and other reproductive-health services.
After Richard Nixon was elected president in
1968, his Republican administration set out to
dismantle Great Society programs, while also
increasing funding for family-planning services
in an eff ort to target the so-called population
bomb. This term, popularized by the Stanford
University professor Paul Ehrlich — and the
title of his 1968 best-selling book — referred to
an exaggerated population explosion that he
incorrectly predicted would lead to global fam-
ine in the 1970s and 1980s. Nixon championed
the Family Planning Services and Population
Research Act of 1970, also known as the Birth
Curb Bill, a $382 million federal program to con-
trol population growth, which had ballooned
into a national obsession.
Eff orts like this took particular aim at poor
women, arguing that poverty bred more pov-
erty, so keeping the poor from having babies
— particularly ‘‘illegitimate’’ children born out
of wedlock — off ered a solution. Though the ini-
tial O.E.O. regulations of 1967 stated that ‘‘no
project funds shall be expended for any surgi-
cal procedures intended to result in steriliza-
tion or to cause abortions,’’ the prohibition on
funding voluntary sterilization ended in 1971.
‘‘The ’70s and ’80s were this kind of interesting
moment where at the same time state steril-
ization laws were being repealed, America was
creating the conditions for the sterilization of
the Relf sisters,’’ says Dr. Stern of the University
of Michigan Sterilization and Social Justice Lab.
‘‘The federal government funneled money into
county family-planning programs, especially
in the South,’’ she continues. ‘‘These facilities
were twisted by racial and eugenic logics and
pre-existing, longstanding racism and disem-
powerment of Black mothers and Black girls.
Yet there were no checks on anything.’’
According to the Relf v. Weinberger lawsuit,
not long after the family moved into public
housing, the Relf sisters were directed to the
family-planning clinic of the Montgomery Com-
munity Action Committee, which was funded
and controlled by the federal O.E.O. The process
began with Katie, the oldest of the three girls,
who was about 16 when she was fi rst injected
with the contraceptive Depo-Provera. At that
time, the drug was still in the investigational
phase and not yet approved by the F.D.A. for
administration to adult women, let alone minor
teenagers. Between 1967 and 1978, during a clin-
ical trial of Depo-Provera, the Grady Memori-
al Hospital Family Planning Clinic in Atlanta
administered the drug to 11,400 mostly poor
Black women despite serious side eff ects, includ-
ing heavy or interrupted menstrual bleeding and
near suicidal depression.
The staff at the family-planning clinic in Mont-
gomery never obtained permission to perform
the injections or adequately explained the shots
to Katie or her mother. Sometime later, Min-
nie Lee and Mary Alice were also injected with
Depo-Provera. Bly remembers that a member of
the staff would later explain the decision by say-
ing that she was worried that ‘‘boys are hanging
around the house, and we don’t want no more
of their kind,’’ though there was no evidence that
any of the girls were sexually active. The Relf
sisters were judged to be intellectually inferior,
though only Mary Alice would be diagnosed with
an actual disability. The other two girls lacked
formal education and were struggling to catch
up to their peers. In March 1973, Katie, then 17,
was again taken to the family-planning clinic,
this time for insertion of an IUD, after the Food
and Drug Administration denied approval of
Depo-Provera because of its link to cancer in ani-
mals. Though Katie was under the age of consent,
her parents would later insist that they were not
consulted about the IUD.
On June 13, 1973, at least one nurse employed
by the family-planning clinic came to the Relfs’
apartment and informed Minnie that her daugh-
ters would need to see a doctor for what she
understood to be more shots. Minnie’s two
younger girls, then 14 and 12, were driven fi rst
to a doctor’s offi ce and then to the Profession-
al Center Hospital in downtown Montgom-
ery. Later, when she met them at the hospital,
health care providers told Minnie she needed
to sign a paper. It is unclear what Minnie Relf
understood, but she trusted her daughters in
the hands of the staff at this clinic, sponsoredby the same government that had given her
family a home, food, money and an education
for her children. Still, it is very clear from her
later Senate testimony that she had no idea that
signing the piece of paper would mean that her
daughters would never be able to bear children.
Because she could not read or write, Minnie
signed what turned out to be a surgical consent
form with an X and was then escorted out to be
driven home while the younger girls remained
alone in the ward.
Before Minnie got back home, one of the
same family-planning nurses returned to the
Relfs’ apartment to pick up Katie and take her
to the hospital. Katie refused to go, locking her-
self in her room. The following day, when Jessie
Bly stopped by, a frantic Katie told her what had
happened. ‘‘Where are your sisters?’’ Bly asked.
‘‘I can show you, Miss Bly,’’ Katie told her, and
they got in Bly’s car and drove to the Professional
Center Hospital.
Nearly half a century later, Bly has no trouble
recalling the younger Relf girls in the hospital,
huddled together, looking small and scared in
cotton surgical gowns. The second they saw the
social worker, they both began to cry. Clinging
to Minnie Lee, Mary Alice sobbed and repeated
over and over: ‘‘I just hurt so bad. I just hurt so
bad, Miss Bly, help me. Help me, Miss Bly.’’
Bly was shaken. She recalls being unable to
sleep, haunted by the image of the young girls
crying and calling her name as they stood in the
hospital ward. She also feared she was somehow
at fault, though she had not been informed about
the contraceptive shots or the sterilizations. ‘‘I
knew I wouldn’t be able to rest, knowing that
this kind of an injustice had been perpetrated
upon these young ladies and nobody was speak-
ing for them,’’ she says. ‘‘It happened because ofThe New York Times Magazine 33‘The ’70s and ’80s
were this kind of interesting
moment where
at the same time state sterilization
laws were being
repealed, America was
creating the conditions
for the sterilization
of the Relf sisters.’