Sterlizing female inmates without approval: California prisons

As recently as 2010. Has anybody checked Georgia prisons recently?

Corey G. Johnson wrote for Center for Investigative Reporting 7 July 2013, Female inmates sterilized in California prisons without approval,

Doctors under contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sterilized nearly 150 female inmates from 2006 to 2010 without required state approvals, The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.

At least 148 women received tubal ligations in violation of prison rules during those five years — and there are perhaps 100 more dating back to the late 1990s, according to state documents and interviews.

From 1997 to 2010, the state paid doctors $147,460 to perform the procedure, according to a database of contracted medical services for state prisoners.

The women were signed up for the surgery while they were pregnant and housed at either the California Institution for Women in Corona or Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla, which is now a men’s prison.

How did this happen?

Lawsuits, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling and public outrage over eugenics and similar sterilization abuses in Alabama and New York spawned new requirements in the 1970s for doctors to fully inform patients.

Since then, it’s been illegal to pressure anyone to be sterilized or ask for consent during labor or childbirth.

Yet, Kimberly Jeffrey says she was pressured by a doctor while sedated and strapped to a surgical table for a C-section in 2010, during a stint at Valley State for a parole violation. Jeffrey, 43, was horrified, she said, and resisted.

“He said, ‘So we’re going to be doing this tubal ligation, right?’ ” Jeffrey said. “I’m like, ‘Tubal ligation? What are you talking about? I don’t want any procedure. I just want to have my baby.’ I went into a straight panic.”

And she’s got the prison and medical records to prove what she says.

That would never happen in Georgia, right? Bo Emerson wrote for the AJC 23 January 2012, Compensation for state-enforced sterilization: Money won’t be enough,

Georgia, which sterilized 3,280 men and women from 1937 to 1963, apologized for its role in the eugenics movement in a 2007 resolution by the General Assembly.

But the legislators who sponsored bills offering that apology said Georgia is unlikely to see any move to provide reparations in the near future. “I am not aware of any suggestion that victims be compensated,” said State Sen. David Shafer, R-Duluth, whose bill expressed “regret” but not an apology. “I am also not sure that you can quantify the damage in dollars and cents.” Yes you can, said Riddick. When she was 19 years old Riddick said her health and fertility were worth $1 million, and she sued North Carolina for that amount. Her complaint was denied. With the help of the ACLU she pursued appeals to the Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case. Today she says, “the price has gone up.”

-jsq