Female Inmates Sterilized in California Prisons

By JG Vibes

It was recently uncovered that hundreds of women were sterilized in California state prisons.

It is important to understand how fallible and corrupt the legal system is when reading stories about people in prison, because many innocent people end up behind bars.  Even among those technically “guilty” of breaking some law, a vast majority (at least 70%) are peaceful people, or so called nonviolent offenders who don’t belong in prison to begin with.  These people are not guilty of any transgression, and they are in fact themselves victims of state violence.

For some reason or another, whether they truly belong there or not, prisoners are looked down upon and feared by the establishment because they are the disobedient ones.

In the 21st century the eugenics movement swept across Europe and the US, it was taught in schools, praised in the media and finally pushed through as government policy almost everywhere.  As we saw throughout history, it is this group who has always been singled out by authoritarian regimes, for experimentation, torture and eugenics projects.

The Nazi party was not the only regime during those times that were guilty of forcing harsh eugenics policies on their people.

All over the United States during World War 2 people who were depressed, handicapped, alcoholic or even children who were as young as 7 years old who happened to score too low on standardized IQ tests were singled out and sterilized.

More than 42,000 people were sterilized in America between 1941 and 1943 under the guise of eugenics, so Germany wasn’t the only country at the time that had sick master race schemes. In fact one of the most influential books to Hitler’s ideology was a book called “passing of the great race” by an American named Madison Grant. Hitler called passing of the great race his “bible” and wrote Grant numerous fan letters.

Many people think that this kind of activity is a thing of the past, but that is far from the case.

The Sacramento Bee recently reported that:

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.

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?”

One former Valley State inmate who gave birth to a son in October 2006 said the institution’s OB-GYN, Dr. James Heinrich, repeatedly pressured her to agree to a tubal ligation.

“As soon as he found out that I had five kids, he suggested that I look into getting it done. The closer I got to my due date, the more he talked about it,” said Christina Cordero, 34, who spent two years in prison for auto theft. “He made me feel like a bad mother if I didn’t do it.”

Cordero, released in 2008 and now living in Upland, agreed to the procedure. “Today,” she said, “I wish I would have never had it done.”