By Andrea Estrada for the UCSB Office of Public Affairs and Communications | Published on 04.06.2015 1:39 p.m.

Beginning in 1909 and continuing for 70 years, California led the country in the number of sterilization procedures performed on men and women, often without their full knowledge and consent. Approximately 20,000 sterilizations took place in state institutions, comprising one-third of the total number performed in the 32 states where such action was legal.

Terence Keel (Sonia Fernandez / UCSB photo)

Known as eugenics, the practice was a commonly accepted means of protecting society from the offspring (and therefore equally suspect) of those individuals deemed inferior or dangerous the poor, the disabled, the mentally ill, criminals and people of color.

Although the law was repealed by the state legislature in 1979, the legacy of the eugenics movement continues today. It is one of the main topics in a public lecture series at UC Santa Barbara. Titled The Biopolitics of Reproduction, the series will approach issues of reproduction from a historical and ethnographic perspective, exploring the eugenics movement, progressive era public health reform, the cultural politics of abortion and the science of womens reproductive systems.

The lectures, which begin at 5 p.m., will take place in 2135 Social Sciences and Media Studies Building at UCSB. They are free and open to the public.

The aim of the series is to place the current crisis facing womens right to comprehensive reproductive health, especially for women of color, within a historical context, said Terence Keel, assistant professor at UCSB, jointly appointed in the Department of Black Studies and the Department of History. The goal is to create awareness and a conversation on campus about how present-day controversies over abortion, sterilization and access to contraception and reproductive care have deep ties to the eugenics movement and long-standing racial and gender biases within Western science.

These connections have left an indelible mark on public health policies, practicesand technological innovation, Keel continued.

The series begins Tuesday, April 14, with a talk by Alexandra Minna Stern, professor of obstetrics and gynecology, American culture and history at the University of Michigan. She will discuss Racial and Reproductive Injustice: The Long History of Eugenic Sterilization in California.

Sterns work focuses on the history of medicine, including eugenics, medical genetics, epidemics, childrens health and tropical medicine. Her book Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America is widely considered to be the definitive study of eugenics in California, said Keel.

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Lecture Series at UCSB Explores Politics of Female Biology and Reproduction