News coverage of a class-action lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center brought U.S. government-funded sterilization abuse to the national spotlight.
Lonnie Relf, having been injured in a car accident, was unable to work and neither he nor his wife, Minnie, were able to read or write.
[5] One case involved Deborah Blackmon, an African American woman from North Carolina who was involuntarily sterilized at 14 years old via a total abdominal hysterectomy in January 1972 due to the court judging her to be "severely mentally retarded".
In 1971, when Montgomery Community Action (MCA) moved the Relf family into public housing, the family planning service of MCA "began the unsolicited administration of experimental birth control injections", containing Depo-Provera, on Katie Relf, Minnie Lee and Mary Alice's older sister.
[3] In March 1973, Katie, a minor, had been taken to the family planning clinic, where she had an intrauterine device, or IUD, insertion procedure.
"[3] In June 1973, two social workers from Montgomery Community visited the Relf residence with concerns that young boys were "hanging around" Minnie Lee and Mary Alice, who were both mentally disabled.
[5] Later that day, Katie Relf, 17 years old at the time, was visited at her family home by a "nurse" seeking to have her be sterilized.
[11] The defendants in the case, Caspar Weinberger, secretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) and then-director of the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) Alvin J. Arnett were accused in the complaint of having "used federal funds and the powers devolved upon them to bring about the use of birth control measures, including sterilization, on the plaintiffs (in the case of OEO) and the class they represent (in the case of OEO and HEW)[...]The defendants Caspar Weinberger and Arnett as well as their predecessors in office were found to have acted to deny plaintiffs and their class status the right to procreate, which is a constitutionally protected right, by failing to establish any guidelines for birth control programs conducted with federal funds, under federal auspices or by failing to distribute such guidelines once formulated.