A new report says California renewed its practice of sterilizing prison inmates between 2006 and 2010. This was three years after then-Gov. Gray Davis and Attorney General Bill Lockyer formally apologized for inmate sterilizations between 1909 and 1964.
Between 1909 and 1964, prison administrators performed forced sterilizations on nearly 20,000 incarcerated women and men, according to Eugenics Nation. Sterilizations began again between 2006 and 2010. Nearly 150 sterilized female inmates were the subjects of an inquiry, the center reported.
“People were forcibly sterilized before medical science discredited and disavowed this practice in the 1960s,” Eugenics Nation reports. In 1979, California state lawmakers officially banned forced sterilizations.
The sterilizations between 2006 and 2010 involved tubal ligations, which is a procedure deemed “not medically necessary,” and, according to prison administrators, “not to be provided.”
Nevertheless, prison doctors convinced the women to have the surgery, according to former inmate Crystal Nguyen. Nguyen told CIR “she often overheard medical staff asking inmates who had served multiple prison terms to agree to be sterilized.”
According to the CIR, the state paid doctors $147,460 to perform the surgery, averaging about $305 per surgery.
“Compared to what you save in welfare paying for these unwanted children, the $147,460 total as minimal,” the CIR quoted a former physician for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The doctor denied pressuring anyone.
State officials showed concern about federal and state laws banning inmate sterilization, if federal funds are used, CIR reports. Therefore, since 1994, top medical officials have approved funding for tubal ligations on a case-by-case basis.
However, “medical staff at these facilities coerced certain women, targeting those deemed likely to return to prison in the future,” the report shows.
Despite this exposure, prison doctors denied approving these procedures, but according to the report, “at least 60 tubal ligations” were administered at Valley State Prison.
Referring to the practice from 1909 until 1964, Lockyer and Davis expressed their sentiments in 2003: “Our hearts are heavy from the pain caused by eugenics,” said Davis.