California struggles to locate victims of forced sterilization
prismreports.org
At least 600 people who have been sterilized against their will in California are now eligible for compensation

But “with only a few months before the program sunsets at the end of 2023, only 80 applications have been approved as of April 2023.”

  • livus@kbin.social
    31·
    1 year ago

    What the hell? I thought this was going to be about historical stuff from last century. But:

    Between 2005 and 2013, California surgically sterilized 144 people in women’s prisons. The majority of the sterilizations occurred at two prisons: Valley State Prison and California Institution for Women in Corona. A single doctor, James Heinrich, was responsible for arranging the bulk of those at Valley State Prison, telling a Reveal reporter the sterilizations were a cost-effective service “compared to what you save in welfare paying for these unwanted children—as they procreated more.” It was Heinrich, too, who arranged for Pulido to have a hysterectomy without explanation of what the procedure would entail.

    The state ultimately banned sterilization as a method of birth control inside prisons and jails in 2014.

    • DessertStorms@kbin.social
      10·
      1 year ago

      The state ultimately banned sterilization as a method of birth control inside prisons and jails in 2014.
      2014!!!

      Don’t think they’ve actually stopped, they probably just frame it differently now (rather than “birth control”, an act of “compassion”, but eugenics either way, and perhaps even an act of genocide in some cases).

      They do it to immigrants
      In Canada (and no doubt elsewhere) they do it to Indigenous people
      And of course disabled people

      It’s not like there’s much to stop them targeting these groups.

    • Raltoid@lemmy.world
      9·
      1 year ago

      Eugenics remained alive and well in federal governement efforts until the late 70s. They just didn’t/don’t talk about it because of how the US supported Germany with that leading up to WW2. The Rockefeller Foundation funded eugenics research that employed Josef Mengele, and US literature was literally being used as templates for early Nazi cleansing programs.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States#Influence_on_Nazi_Germany

      The 1978 Federal Sterilization Regulations, created by the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare or HEW, (now the United States Department of Health and Human Services) outline a variety of prohibited sterilization practices that were often used previously to coerce or force women into sterilization.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States#Compulsory_sterilization_prevention_and_continuation

    • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
      6·
      1 year ago

      The worst part is that it doesn’t seem like there was any kind of punishment for this doctor. Or at least I couldn’t find evidence of that and he may still be practicing? He’d be quite old at this point.

      • livus@kbin.social
        5·
        1 year ago

        Yeah it’s insane. The doctor, James Heinrich, is retired (dead?) but sounds like a monster and had been sued multiple times for malpractice before the prison hired him. I wish there was a class action against him.

        The worst part for me though is that there are women who were involuntarily sterilized there who are not eligible for compensation.

        Some people had an endometrial ablation, a procedure where the uterine lining is destroyed to reduce, or sometimes stop, menstrual flow. Those with endometrial ablations don’t qualify for compensation, despite the likelihood of pregnancy after the procedure being incredibly low and the risks of miscarriage or other complications being much higher.

        The compensation program also does not include a sizable group of victims of forced sterilizations—the more that 200 women sterilized at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center between 1968 and 1974. These women, many of them Mexican migrants who spoke little to no English, were coerced into consenting to sterilizations while in labor without any information or translated materials describing what the procedure would mean.

    • vlad@lemmy.sdf.org
      11·
      1 year ago

      California is a fucked up place. I’m not saying that they’re unique, but they are one of the worst states.