 The patterns were even worse for non-married black women; in 1978, the tubal sterilization rate for never-married black women was 529 percent greater than that of their white counterparts.During the 1960s and 1970s, punitive sterilization laws were proposed in California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.The purpose of such laws was to reduce the number of children born to poor, unmarried mothers.