A bill aimed at preventing coerced sterilizations in California prisons passed its first legislative hurdle today.
By a 9-0 vote, members of the state Senate Health Committee unanimously approved SB 1135. The bill, spearheaded by Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, would ban the sterilization of inmates for birth control purposes, limiting the procedures to dire medical emergencies.
“Far too often, hysterectomies are the first procedure being used by doctors on women for medical problems that may have more effective and less dramatic treatments available,” Jackson said. “SB 1135 clarifies the law. This will hopefully prevent future abuses and make sure the ban on sterilization is clear to all.”
The bill now goes to the Senate Public Safety Committee for consideration.
The bill is the culmination of talks among lawmakers, prison rights advocates and correctional officials in the wake of a CIR investigation that found that 132 women received tubal ligations in violation of prison rules from 2006 to 2010 – and perhaps 100 more dating back to the late 1990s.
Former inmates and prisoner advocates told CIR that prison medical staff coerced the women, targeting those deemed likely to return to prison in the future.
The federal receivership, which oversees health care in state prisons, testified in support of Jackson’s bill. So did members of Oakland-based prisoner rights group Justice Now, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, the California Catholic Conference, Planned Parenthood, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children and the California Coalition for Women Prisoners.
Some lawmakers were visibly moved by the testimony of Kelli Dillon, a former inmate at the Central California Women’s Facility who maintains she was sterilized without her knowledge. Dillon burst into tears as she recounted the moment she discovered that a surgeon had permanently damaged her ovaries. It happened in 2001, Dillon said, during a routine biopsy exam and surgery to remove cysts.
“My life didn’t stop in prison. The quality of my life didn’t stop there,” Dillon said. “Yet, I feel like I’ve been robbed. This bill will protect women who have the ability to be rehabilitated.”
Shannon Smith-Crowley and Dr. Yen Truong of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists told lawmakers that their group supported the bill’s objectives, but not its current version.
Truong said she wanted to make sure that inmates who wanted sterilizations continued to have access. She also worried that current language in the legislation would block some medically necessary sterilizations.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Republish Our Content
Thanks for your interest in republishing a story from Reveal. As a nonprofit newsroom, we want to share our work with as many people as possible. You are free to embed our audio and video content and republish any written story for free under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 license and will indemnify our content as long as you strictly follow these guidelines:
-
Do not change the story. Do not edit our material, except only to reflect changes in time and location. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week,” and “Portland, Ore.” to “Portland” or “here.”)
-
Please credit us early in the coverage. Our reporter(s) must be bylined. We prefer the following format: By Will Evans, Reveal.
-
If republishing our stories, please also include this language at the end of the story: “This story was produced by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit news organization. Learn more at revealnews.org and subscribe to the Reveal podcast, produced with PRX, at revealnews.org/podcast.”
-
Include all links from the story, and please link to us at https://www.revealnews.org.
PHOTOS
-
You can republish Reveal photos only if you run them in or alongside the stories with which they originally appeared and do not change them.
-
If you want to run a photo apart from that story, please request specific permission to license by contacting Digital Engagement Producer Sarah Mirk, smirk@revealnews.org. Reveal often uses photos we purchase from Getty and The Associated Press; those are not available for republication.
DATA
-
If you want to republish Reveal graphics or data, please contact Data Editor Soo Oh, soh@revealnews.org.
IN GENERAL
-
We do not compensate anyone who republishes our work. You also cannot sell our material separately or syndicate it.
-
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually. To inquire about syndication or licensing opportunities, please contact Sarah Mirk, smirk@revealnews.org.
-
If you plan to republish our content, you must notify us republish@revealnews.org or email Sarah Mirk, smirk@revealnews.org.
-
If we send you a request to remove our content from your website, you must agree to do so immediately.
-
Please note, we will not provide indemnification if you are located or publishing outside the United States, but you may contact us to obtain a license and indemnification on a case-by-case basis.
If you have any other questions, please contact us at republish@revealnews.org.