Immodest Proposal

Normally, I try to side with the underdogs in life, and am deeply distrustful of the prison-industrial complex, especially as it continues to privatize. And I know this is going to make me sound like even more of a heartless tool than I already do, but I find this article a bit less disconcerting than the author may have intended:

Doctors under contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sterilized nearly 150 female inmates from 2006 to 2010 without required state approvals, The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.

At least 148 women received tubal ligations in violation of prison rules during those five years – and there are perhaps 100 more dating back to the late 1990s, according to state documents and interviews.

From 1997 to 2010, the state paid doctors $147,460 to perform the procedure, according to a database of contracted medical services for state prisoners.

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,’ ” Nguyen, 28, said. “Do they think they’re animals, and they don’t want them to breed anymore?”

Who knows what "they" think? It's probably a fair guess to assume that at the very least, they're aiming for repeat offenders with a bunch of kids, all of whom are almost certainly supported by the state.

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.”

The hell you say. Look, lady, sorry someone had to act like a fucking adult in your life, but come on.

Cordero, released in 2008 and now living in Upland, Calif., agreed [to the procedure], but she says, “today, I wish I would have never had it done.”

Right, because the only thing that sets an ex-con's life back on track when they already have five kids is a sixth one. But again, she agreed to it. It's not like they strapped her to a table and forcibly did the procedure.

During an interview with CIR, Heinrich said he provided an important service to poor women who faced health risks in future pregnancies because of past cesarean sections. The 69-year-old Bay Area physician denied pressuring anyone and expressed surprise that local contract doctors had charged for the surgeries. He described the $147,460 total as minimal.

“Over a 10-year period, that isn’t a huge amount of money,” Heinrich said, “compared to what you save in welfare paying for these unwanted children – as they procreated more.”

....

Heinrich said he offered tubal ligations only to pregnant inmates with a history of at least three C-sections. Additional pregnancies would be dangerous for these women, Heinrich said, because scar tissue inside the uterus could tear, resulting in massive blood loss and possible death.

“It was a medical problem that we had to make them aware of,” Heinrich said. “It’s up to the doctor who’s delivering (your baby) … to make you aware of what’s going on. We’re at risk for not telling them.”

No doubt Dr. Heinrich is being somewhat self-serving, but it also doesn't sound like he was taking 19-year-old girls and tying them off after the first one. It's nice that convicted felons have people to advocate for every little thing for them -- including the "right" to further overburden an already grievously strapped state system -- but other people are forced to pay for all these "choices." That probably sounds a little more teabaggery than it should, but whatever. Even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while.

At what point do working people, who play by the rules, color within the lines, and live within their means, get to stop paying for the indifference and irresponsibility of others? Seriously.

Former inmates tell a different story.

Michelle Anderson, who gave birth in December 2006 while at Valley State, said she’d had one prior C-section. Anderson, 44, repeatedly was asked to agree to be sterilized, she said, and was not told what risk factors led to the requests. She refused.

Nikki Montano also had had one C-section before she landed at Valley State in 2008, pregnant and battling drug addiction.

Montano, 42, was serving time after pleading guilty to burglary, forgery and receiving stolen property. The mother of seven children, she said neither Heinrich nor the medical staff told her why she needed a tubal ligation.

“I figured that’s just what happens in prison – that that’s the best kind of doctor you’re going get,” Montano said. “He never told me nothing about nothing.”

Welp, so it sounds like the first inmate refused Dr. MengeleHeinrich's offer, and went on about things. The second one went for it, because maybe seven kids is enough, especially if you can't afford them.

Look, I'm not saying that no one should ever use public support for their children, or wait until they're wealthy to procreate. There's truth in the old saying that "if you wait until you can afford to have kids, you'll never have them." But we're talking here about incarcerated women who already have five, seven kids. And since, you know, they're in prison and probably not married to stockbrokers, again all those kids (and by definition at least one parent) are already on the public tit.

(Not to mention the glaringly obvious fact that, again, they're in prison, and have had even their most basic rights taken away. Every facet of their lives is controlled on a daily basis:  when to eat, when to sleep, when to shit, who you live with. They're under constant threat of physical and sexual assault by other inmates, and probably by some staff as well. Even their communications with the outside world -- especially the media -- are carefully controlled, so that they can't tell their stories. But this, apparently, is a bridge too far. This is what "dehumanizes" them beyond all else. Hokay.)

And of course there are great amounts of abuse of gubmint largesse in the upper echelons of society; grifting Uncle Sucka ain't just for the po' and indigent. And that needs to be stopped as well, with a quickness. Unfortunately those folks also own the media and electoral systems, so it's kinda tough. But felons with a ton of children seem to be pretty low-hanging fruit, as far as achieving an almost instantaneous effect with very little effort or expense.

Now, to be sure, there are two huge qualifiers to what I'm saying here:  one, that these procedures should never be done without consent, though it sounds like mostly what went on was "coercion," doctors trying to talk some sense into these idiots and stop inflicting their self-destructive tendencies on ever more children; two, that male prisoners should be made the same offer, with perhaps even more coercion.

The better way to go about this would be to institute a program of "positive coercion"; that is, find the worst of the worst -- the women with eight kids by six men; the men with twelve kids by ten women -- and pay them to stop. Make it worth their while; offer them a decent lump sum of cash, or an interest-accruing trust fund that can't be touched until their oldest goes to college or whatever. Maybe even take some time off the sentence for non-violent offenders. Not because the poor or the mentally ill or criminals are deemed "inferior," but because they don't pull their fucking weight, and working people really are having a tough enough time getting by. And because children deserve to have competent, loving, engaged parents who are going to work hard to give them a future.

California is already in deep shit with unfunded liabilities; as you can see from the link, only 64% funded on public pension plans. When the meter drops to 49.9%, then you're royally screwed, because then basically your payroll expenses are going more for people who don't work than for people who do work. And guess whose backs it comes out of when the inevitable shortfall comes up?

It shouldn't matter who someone is, or what their background is, or whatever -- if you want to have five or ten or twenty kids, knock yourself out. But you pay for them yourself, especially after a certain point. There is a vested societal interest in the state assisting with new mothers (especially working mothers) for the first two or three children, maybe some sort of European-style model where the mother gets the first year off work, paid, so that she can provide child care, and not just have to dump the kid off with someone, like working women usually have to do here.

But that's not what we're talking about, and it's important that the distinction be made. Yes, if you fuck up and go to prison, you do not have rights to infinity children at everyone else's expense, sorry. Ditto if you've never worked a day, but manage to keep getting knocked up and you have social services on your speed dial. Is that harsh? Yes. It's also harsh that a lot of working people are getting screwed because the state budget is constantly in the shitter -- for a variety of reasons, but one of the easiest to alleviate is that (rumor has it) someone figured out some years back several methods, some temporary and some permanent, to prevent unwanted pregnancies and still have plenty of sex. Science!

This does not sit well with the "advocacy" industry, people who serve as truth-to-power voices on behalf of aggrieved special interests, such as the homeless, or prisoners, or crack whores, but the fact of the matter is that there are some people who are milking and abusing the system, who will never even try to contribute anything positive to society. And that's fine too; everyone's free to be an asshole if they so choose. But they shouldn't be free to demand that everyone else pay for it.

It's an interesting line to draw anyway, considering we have a society where do-gooders feel no compunction whatsoever telling people what they should eat, drink, wear, drive, say, believe, what bags to use for their groceries, etc. It's routine; whatever side of the equation we each happen to be on, we're all used to it. But boy howdy, if you approach people who have had a disproportionately negative impact on their families and communities, and offer them a chance to at least quit while they're behind, and you're the next coming of the eugenics/Nazi movement.

We've all had a laugh at how the cult classic Idiocracy is more or less a documentary. Well, this is how it happens, with people who don't give a shit about anything but themselves doing whatever the hell they please, because they know someone else will foot the bill for their poor impulse control and decision-making.

There are plenty of folks out there who really have been screwed over by the system, even after working hard and playing by the rules, and maybe the advocates should talk to those folks once in a blue moon, rather than rushing to the aid of the ex-con with five kids who's pissed because The Man cheated her out of her "right" to have a sixth.

This is the responsibility side of reproductive choice, and it's too bad some folks have a problem with it, because at the rate things are going, the bottom will drop out of what's left of the working middle class, and there won't be anything left of the safety net at all, "deserving" or not.