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Via FoxNews:

WASHINGTON – California lawmakers are demanding to know why doctors under contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sterilized nearly 150 female inmates in four years without required state approval and, as some claim, strongly pressured or even tricked some of the women into signing off.

One doctor even allegedly suggested that the procedures would help the state save on welfare.

While not part of a formal sterilization program, the surgeries were performed with alarming frequency. At least 148 women in the California prison system were sterilized by tubal ligation without state approval between 2006 and 2010, confirmed Joyce Hayhoe, director of legislation for the California Correctional Health Care Services. The story was first reported by the Center for Investigative Reporting.

Tubal ligation is when a woman’s fallopian tubes are clamped and blocked or severed and sealed, which then prevents eggs from reaching the uterus for fertilization. The procedure is considered permanent and requires patients to undergo general anesthesia.

"Pressuring a vulnerable population — including at least one documented instance of a patient under sedation — to undergo these extreme procedures erodes the ban on eugenics," the California Legislative Women's Caucus wrote in a letter to the federal receiver in charge of prison healthcare.

Though the women technically signed consent forms, there are now allegations that they were pressured or tricked.

“One situation occurred when a doctor asked his patient to agree to a tubal ligation when she was sedated and strapped to an operating table for a C-section,” state Sen. Ted Lieu wrote in a July 10 letter to the Medical Board of California. “Other incidents involved doctors repeatedly harassing and pressuring inmates to get tubal ligations.”

The operations were performed at outside hospitals and medical facilities by doctors under contract with the corrections department. The unauthorized sterilization involved inmates from the California Institution for Women in Corona and Valley State Prison in Chowchilla. The operations are only allowed if medically necessary, which the sterilizations were not. Doctors were paid $147,460 to perform the procedures.

“The first priority we had was to stop it from taking place, which we did in 2010,” Hayhoe said, adding that the female prisoners had all signed a consent form for the surgeries.

“We’ve been assured that this practice hasn’t occurred since (2010), but the question of course is why was this occurring?” state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson of Santa Barbara, who also signed Lieu’s letter, told CIR. “We want to make absolutely sure – whether we have to do legislation or what – this procedure never becomes the practice it had in the past.”

Former Valley State Prison inmate Crystal Nguyen worked in the prison’s infirmary during 1997. According to CIR, Nguyen told investigators she often overheard members of the medical staff asking inmates to agree to be sterilized.

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

Lieu, chairman of the Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee, which oversees the medical board, singled out Dr. James Heinrich, at Valley State Prison, in his letter to the board.

“Particularly troubling was a statement by Dr. James Heinrich, OB-GYN at Valley State Prison, who made a reference that tubal ligations on inmates save in welfare paying for these unwanted children – as they procreated more," Lieu wrote. He continued: “Whether a surgical procedure would have any hypothetical effect on welfare rolls should never, ever play a part in a doctor’s decision.”

Calls to Heinrich and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation were not immediately returned.

At least 10 other women have filed complaints with Justice Now, a prisoner advocacy group, claiming they were sterilized improperly in procedures that included having their ovaries removed.

Kelli Thomas was an inmate in Chowchilla when she went into surgery for a biopsy and to have two cysts removed, the Los Angeles Times reported. She signed off on having her ovaries removed if doctors found cancer but expressed that she wanted to have children in the future. According to her medical records, Thomas was cancer-free but her ovaries were removed anyway.

“I feel like I was tricked,” Thomas told the LA Times. “I gave permission to do it based on a (cancer) diagnosis, and the diagnosis wasn’t there.”

News of the unauthorized and unnecessary sterilization comes at a time when thousands of inmates across California continue to refuse food as part of the state’s largest hunger strike.

Initially, more than 30,000 inmates had participated. They are protesting lengthy stints in solitary confinement as well as improved prison conditions. Prisoners could be force-fed if a court order is issued, but there hasn’t been one issued yet.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/07/15/california-lawmakers-demand-answers-on-148-unauthorized-female-inmate/#ixzz2ZCQymP6m

That's awful. Notable that it happened to women and not men, too.

 Da Boss wrote:
That's awful. Notable that it happened to women and not men, too.

Why does the gender matter? It's fethed up anyway.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
That's awful. Notable that it happened to women and not men, too.

Why does the gender matter? It's fethed up anyway.

Might show that the people that did this have a bias towards the mindset that it's a woman's fault if she gets pregnant?

 d-usa wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
That's awful. Notable that it happened to women and not men, too.

Why does the gender matter? It's fethed up anyway.

Might show that the people that did this have a bias towards the mindset that it's a woman's fault if she gets pregnant?

Perhaps it was simply that an occasion presented itself? Logically, it would make more sense to someone inclined to think this way to target men.

Anyway, truly disgusting.

I just recently watched a documentary about eugenics,how strange. That's a mighty slippery slope

Sterilize! Imperfection! Sterilize!

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
That's awful. Notable that it happened to women and not men, too.

Why does the gender matter? It's fethed up anyway.

Possibly because if you ask a male inmate to get sterilized, he'll generally say something like, "you want to do what, to my WHAT?!? oh feth no, you don't!!"

As the article outlined, they did in some cases use false pretenses to go in there and sterilize the women, not saying they're right, just that they obviously thought that the easier route was through the women.

It's definitely a fethed up story, but I find that my give a damn is broken on this one. Simply put they're prisoners. Obviously someone's head will roll for this, just because someone has lost their right to vote/carry firearms/whatever, doesn't mean that they have lost their right to life after prison, and lost the right to have a "normal" life with husband/children should they try to go that route.

I'm with Ensis on this one... my give a damn is broke... It's a fethed up story for sure and it does prevent people from having a normal life after they get out of prison, but it seems as though it was a way to "stem" the impression that children raised by criminals have a better chance of becoming criminals themselves.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
That's awful. Notable that it happened to women and not men, too.

Why does the gender matter? It's fethed up anyway.

When something could happen to either gender, but exclusively happens to one gender, it's worth noting.

I'm pretty sad that some of you guys lack empathy to the point where you don't care about the people this happened to. I expected as much from the thread, based on other threads where prisoners have been discussed as though they were subhuman, but still.

I used to get into ferocious arguments about this with my co-workers in a previous school. You could easily see which kids were going to continue the cycle of abuse, degradation and crime, and people would often express the opinion that they should be sterilised to prevent them from doing so. I strongly disagree, and think it's a truly evil act to do that to someone without their full informed consent. Considering how much of the population is incarcerated for trivial crimes, and how many get away with serious white collar crimes, the attitude towards prisoners is just depressing.

What the feth?

...

I don't even...

o.O

There's gotta be more to this.

I know you find it sad that some of us lack empathy, but the US prison system doesn't deter people from committing crimes. So we have women and (mostly) men that get released, and within 3 years about 30% of them (or so) will wind up back in prison. With people that have the potential to create children, this simply continues the cycle of children growing up in homes without parents because a third of them have wound up back in prisons. So now you have a broken home, with a child down 1, and maybe in some cases both parents. That child learns that the system doesn't work the way it should, and he has to turn to a life of crime because he can't get what he needs (food, commodities, etc...).

Sterilizing the inmates like I said is fethed up, but I also said my give a damn is broke, like Kronk asks when Dakkanauts are "running for president". Will people have to pass a test before they're allowed to breed? A little rhetorical, but the point kind of stands here.

Hmmm Eugenics... clearly not a thing of the past.

I hate it when idiots do stuff like this. It makes it so much less likely that we will get to a point where we can actually improve the human DNA sequence in a reasonable and controlled manor because they have to go and give the entire branch of study a bad name.

I feel incredibly bad for the people this ridiculous incident affected, but I feel equally bad over the fact that we may never get around to living longer happier lives by cutting out the massive parts of our DNA that doesn't actually do anything.

 dementedwombat wrote:
I hate it when idiots do stuff like this. It makes it so much less likely that we will get to a point where we can actually improve the human DNA sequence in a reasonable and controlled manor because they have to go and give the entire branch of study a bad name.

I feel incredibly bad for the people this ridiculous incident affected, but I feel equally bad over the fact that we may never get around to living longer happier lives by cutting out the massive parts of our DNA that doesn't actually do anything.

What does the sterilization of inmates have to do with the study of genetics? Eugenics =/= Genetics.... two completely different fields of "study"

That would depend on how you exactly want to define the term. The broadest definition of the word is just "the improvement of a species by genetic means". I suppose you could say eugenics is applied genetics the way engineering is applied mathematics.

To a good amount of people though, stuff like this incident makes eugenics a "bad word", so if you want to get funding for a project to "isolate and remove unnecessary parts of the human genetic code in test cells" it's going to be dang difficult.

Not necessarily the same thing, but every incident where eugenics/human improvement in general gets painted in a negative light just makes it a little more of an uphill battle for people who want to do it responsibly and consensually.

edit to say I just want to make it perfectly clear that I am in no way saying what these people did was anything other than stupid and in violation of basic human rights/dignity. I don't think I'll be talking any further on this topic because I don't want to pull the thread too far away from what it actually should be about.

Why would cutting non coding DNA do anything?

There would be piles of potential repercussions from that.

I'm actually pro genetic experimentation, but, you know in sensible ways. Unless I've missed something huge in recent years and we've found out something about non-coding DNA that I didn't already know. I am pretty sure the last I checked it was proving more important than we'd previously realised.

 Alfndrate wrote:
I know you find it sad that some of us lack empathy, but the US prison system doesn't deter people from committing crimes. So we have women and (mostly) men that get released, and within 3 years about 30% of them (or so) will wind up back in prison. With people that have the potential to create children, this simply continues the cycle of children growing up in homes without parents because a third of them have wound up back in prisons. So now you have a broken home, with a child down 1, and maybe in some cases both parents. That child learns that the system doesn't work the way it should, and he has to turn to a life of crime because he can't get what he needs (food, commodities, etc...).

So is that a problem with the people committing the crimes, or is that a problem with the system? Mind you, as almost every last apartment application, loan application, and job application you may need to fill out to live a normal life requires you to put down whether you've been convicted of any felonies. I've seen some lately that have asked if you've even been tried for ANY crime, let alone convictions.

I mean, think about it. Person commits crime. Person pays for it via whatever sentence is offered it court. Person is now out in the real world. Even if the person has actual marketable skills or abilities, person can no longer use them. You can only live in the sketchiest parts of town, getting the most menial (and poorly paying) jobs available. It's hard to get a reliable car, because you can't get a loan, making your ability to get to work that much more tenuous.

Why on earth WOULDN'T you turn into a repeat offender at that point? What are you getting out of playing nice with world around you?

To me, it sounds like the for-profit system is doing a good job of keeping repeat customers, not doing what (rehabilitation) it's supposed to.

Depends on what you want out of the system . The system "works" so far in that it keeps offenders of the streets where they can't (in the current sense) do any harm to others. The system doesn't work because much like the sodajerk at the McDonalds or the drug dealer down the street, the prison system wants people to come back into their fold. So it benefits the prison system to create an environment where criminals can't compete in the real world.

There are people that go to prison that serve their time and are eager to return to society to be better, and then there are people that serve their time and feel like being better is too much work (which in some cases it might be).

I'm not saying what the prisons did was right at all, I'm saying that I am trying to find where I should care, and I can't find it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 daedalus wrote:
To me, it sounds like the for-profit system is doing a good job of keeping repeat customers, not doing what (rehabilitation) it's supposed to.

I completely agree with your statement.

What an awful story.

 Ouze wrote:
What an awful story.

Agreed... So very much agreed.

This is absolutely disgusting. I hope that whomever was responsible for this is called to account for their actions.

 Da Boss wrote:
That's awful. Notable that it happened to women and not men, too.

Men can have their fallopian tubes clamped?

So who was paying for this? Aren't US prisons privately run? They're not going to pay for stuff that doesn't benefit them directly, someone stumped up the money somewhere.

It's an awful story, some won't have sympathy with people who are 'just criminals' but they are often troubled and vulnerable people in themselves. To take advantage of them to perform irreversible and life altering surgery is disgusting. These women won't be able to have children now, think of the pain and hurt that could cause in later life. Just horrible.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
So who was paying for this? Aren't US prisons privately run? They're not going to pay for stuff that doesn't benefit them directly, someone stumped up the money somewhere.

It's an awful story, some won't have sympathy with people who are 'just criminals' but they are often troubled and vulnerable people in themselves. To take advantage of them to perform irreversible and life altering surgery is disgusting. These women won't be able to have children now, think of the pain and hurt that could cause in later life. Just horrible.

Some prisons are privately run. I don't think this would make sense for a private prison to do anyways. Way to much risk of being sued, and honestly, why would they want fewer future criminals on the street?

Horrible story.

 dementedwombat wrote:
if you want to get funding for a project to "isolate and remove unnecessary parts of the human genetic code in test cells" it's going to be dang difficult.

Probably because it is pretty stupid and pointless? A lot of the non-coding DNA is there to buffer coding DNA and prevent it from being damaged, as well as maintain the overal structure of the genes. Not to mention there are new genes still being mapped and studied constantly - most of which we have very little idea as to what they do, making "chopping and changing" human DNA on a massive scale pretty hard. Most research focuses on a handful of genes examined in isolation. I've worked in labs using human cells and tissues doing genetic work and while I have more of an Engineering background, have worked with various cell lines (mainly MG63 cells I used for examining different nanoparticles for magnetic fluid hyperthermia) - the kind of rubbish you are spouting would get you sad head shakes from any tissue engineering or biology lab in the world; there is plenty of work taking place on human genes and DNA, even with some quite strict (and IMO necessary) controls.

 Da Boss wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
That's awful. Notable that it happened to women and not men, too.

Why does the gender matter? It's fethed up anyway.

When something could happen to either gender, but exclusively happens to one gender, it's worth noting.

I'm pretty sad that some of you guys lack empathy to the point where you don't care about the people this happened to. I expected as much from the thread, based on other threads where prisoners have been discussed as though they were subhuman, but still.

I used to get into ferocious arguments about this with my co-workers in a previous school. You could easily see which kids were going to continue the cycle of abuse, degradation and crime, and people would often express the opinion that they should be sterilised to prevent them from doing so. I strongly disagree, and think it's a truly evil act to do that to someone without their full informed consent. Considering how much of the population is incarcerated for trivial crimes, and how many get away with serious white collar crimes, the attitude towards prisoners is just depressing.

No crime is trivial. Even thinking that is highly treasonous. Crime must be corrected to maintain proper rule of Law.

The only creatures who don't follow the Law...is animals.

I mean, think about it. Person commits crime. Person pays for it via whatever sentence is offered it court. Person is now out in the real world. Even if the person has actual marketable skills or abilities, person can no longer use them. You can only live in the sketchiest parts of town, getting the most menial (and poorly paying) jobs available. It's hard to get a reliable car, because you can't get a loan, making your ability to get to work that much more tenuous.

History always follows a person around. A life of crime will have disastrous effects on job prospects...and so it should.

That is Penance and should teach a healthy respect for the Law.

 Mr Hyena wrote:


No crime is trivial. Even thinking that is highly treasonous. Crime must be corrected to maintain proper rule of Law.

The only creatures who don't follow the Law...is animals.

I guess that means that the law (in Dredd's voice) doesn't applies to me... since I'm a manimal afterall.

I'm wondering who has decided that any part of the human genome are 'unnecessary' to the point of warranting removal, genes related to genetic illnesses yes, but just other stuff? I don't know why you would want to remove non-coding regions of DNA, they aren't harmful and contribute to the integrity of the genome and are used in chromosome sorting and the like. I've read many suggestions as to the various purposes they serve and can only see that it would do a huge amount of damage rather than achieve anything at all, and I'm not sure what we're trying to achieve.

Anyway, on the matter of interchangeably describing things as 'eugenics' and 'genetics'. The scientific journal Annals of Human Genetics was formerly known as the Annals of Eugenics until the 1950s when the term Eugenics fell out of favour.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I'm wondering who has decided that any part of the human genome are 'unnecessary' to the point of warranting removal, genes related to genetic illnesses yes, but just other stuff? I don't know why you would want to remove non-coding regions of DNA, they aren't harmful and contribute to the integrity of the genome and are used in chromosome sorting and the like. I've read many suggestions as to the various purposes they serve and can only see that it would do a huge amount of damage rather than achieve anything at all, and I'm not sure what we're trying to achieve.

Anyway, on the matter of interchangeably describing things as 'eugenics' and 'genetics'. The scientific journal Annals of Human Genetics was formerly known as the Annals of Eugenics until the 1950s when the term Eugenics fell out of favour.

Its less about removing junk dna, as much as the potential to remove undesirable characteristics genetically. Its a good way to correct people.