California legislators urge speedy inquiry into prison sterilizations

California legislators urge speedy inquiry into prison sterilizations
Aug 21, 2013

Corey G. Johnson

SACRAMENTO, Calif. ­­– Legislators today fast-tracked an audit into why doctors under contract with the state sterilized nearly 150 female prison inmates from 2006 to 2010 without the required authorizations.

During a hearing at the State Capitol, members of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee unanimously approved the investigation into female sterilization and asked the California State Auditor’s office to make the review its highest priority.

Assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, and Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, of the California Legislative Women’s Caucus requested the audit in response to an investigation by The Center for Investigative Reporting that found that nearly 250 inmates had received tubal ligations since 1997.

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.

Tubal ligations have been restricted since 1994 to instances of medical necessity – and only when authorized by top state corrections officials. But a former medical official told CIR that prison medical staff considered the rule unfair and looked for ways around it.

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“For those of us who serve in state government, this is irrevocably unacceptable,” Jackson said. “The fact that this is the 21st century and we have to ask our state auditor to see if women are being coercively sterilized is absolutely unconscionable and, frankly, revolting.”

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