Finally, President Obama is doing something right. According to a report published today on The Sacramento Bee website, female prisoners were sterilized to prevent them from having babies who will probably grow up to be gangbangers. 150 inmates were sterilized between 2006 and 2010, but many more tubal ligation procedures were performed in the 1990s. Doctors under contract with the California penal system were paid $147 for each procedure. The doctors reportedly targeted female inmates who had multiple children and were deemed most likely to be repeat offenders.
From The Sacramento Bee:
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.
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, pictured above with her son Neiko Nguyen. “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.”
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Photo: Noah Berger For the Center for Investigative Reporting
