From 2006- 2010, nearly 150 female inmates were sterilized in California prisons, without required state approvals.
According to The Center for Investigative Reporting. at least 148 women received tubal litigations without the approval of the officials in charge of authorizing those types of surgeries.
Since 1994, the sterilization surgery has required the signature of a medical official from the state capital for each and every instance. According to documents obtained by journalists, however, no such records exist.
Dr. Ricki Barnett, the physician who tracks medical services and costs for the California Prison Health Care Receivership Corp, told the Center that the health care committee responsible for authorizing those surgeries have not seen a single request.
The papers obtained by the investigators suggest something much to the contrary, though, with records indicating that physicians contracted by the state earned $147,460 in local funds to perform those surgeries between 1997 and 2010.
Dr. Daun Martin, the top medical manager in charge of Chowchilla, California’s Valley State Prison from 2005 through 2008, added that she never authorized a single tubal litigation during her tenure at the penitentiary. State contracts suggest at least 60 of those surgeries were performed during that span, though, with state procedures apparently sidestepped in order to sterilize women without the proper paperwork ever being filed at both Valley State and the California Institution for Women in Corona.
Valley State inmate, 34 year-old Christina Cordero, locked up for two years for auto theft, says that in October 2006, the institution’s OB-GYN, Dr. James Heinrich, repeatedly pressured her to be sterilized.
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. He made me feel like a bad mother if I didn’t do it," says Cordero.
Another former inmate, Crystal Nguyen, worked in the infirmary at the prison in 2007 and she recalls 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,’ ” Nguyen said. “Do they think they’re animals, and they don’t want them to breed anymore?”
During an interview with CIR, Heinrich said he provided an important service to poor women who faced health risks in future pregnancies because of past cesarean sections. The 69-year-old Bay Area physician denied pressuring anyone and expressed surprise that local contract doctors had charged for the surgeries. He described the $147,460 total as minimal.
“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.”
Read the entire piece at Center for Investigative Reporting.
