Nancy Hernandez (reproductive rights)

Nancy Hernandez (born c. 1945) is an American who was a 21-year-old resident and mother of two in Santa Barbara, California, in 1966, when she was ordered to be sterilized or be imprisoned. Nancy pleaded guilty that year for being with her boyfriend, Joseph Sanchez, while he used illegal narcotics. The Santa Barbara County judge that presided over the trial, Santa Barbara Municipal Court Judge Frank P. Kearney, requested that if she wanted to receive probation then she must submit to sterilization. The judge's decision channeled eugenic principles to assert that if Hernandez acts immorally then she should not be allowed to have more children. Nancy was one of many Latina women who were attempted to be forcibly sterilized. Many women of color across the United States who were asked to submit to sterilization, coerced into sterilization, or did not consent to sterilization. The charge was a misdemeanor with a maximum of six years in jail. However, this is not all that Nancy Hernandez would go on to be known for. Her case was one of many for Mexican American and Indigenous-American women in America. The practice of sterilizing women of color became a normal practice for punishment. The Author, Rebecca Kluchin discusses in her book, Fit to be Tied: Sterilization and Reproductive Rights in America, 1950-1980, how women deemed to be unfit mothers were forced into involuntary sterilization. This practice existed well through the twentieth century and was a form of eugenics and neo-eugenics to control minority populations in America. In Herndandez's case, it was assumed that because she was a minority and in the presence of marijuana that she naturally would descend to non-moral conduct and should not have children. Kearney's main goal was to reduce the state's welfare expenditures through forced sterilization. In 1967, she was married to Sanchez by Judge Kearney, the man who had sentenced her to sterilization.

According to researcher Luis Quinones, by standing up against sterilization as a sentence, her case is one of the important events in Hispanic history in the United States. Although many women of color were subject to sterilization practices, Latina women were subjected seven times the rate of white and African American women throughout the twentieth century. Nancy's was the first case to reach national and public attention and resulted in protests on women's rights and reproductive rights across the country.