State Funds Used for Sterilization of Female Inmates Without Approval

Former inmates and prisoner advocates maintain that prison medical staff coerced the women, targeting those deemed likely to return to prison in the future.

Crystal Nguyen, a former Valley State Prison inmate who worked in the prison’s infirmary during 2007, said she often overheard medical staff asking inmates who had served multiple prison terms to agree to be sterilized.

“I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s not right,’ “ said Nguyen, 28. “Do they think they’re animals, and they don’t want them to breed anymore?”

Remember all that forced sterilization that happened in the U.S. throughout the last century? From 2006 to 2010, at least 148 female inmates in California have been pressured to agree to tubal ligation procedures without any of the required state approvals (Supreme Court rulings and public outrage over eugenics have made it illegal to pressure anyone to be sterilized). From 1997 to 2010, the state paid doctors $147,460 to perform the procedure. Dr. James Heinrich, one of the OB-GYNs performing the procedure denied pressuring anyone and “described the $147,460 total as minimal.” And then he says this:

Over a 10-year period, that isn’t a huge amount of money,” Heinrich said, “compared to what you save in welfare paying for these unwanted children — as they procreated more.”

Photo: Pavel Tcholakov

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