California Seeks Answers On Questionable Prison Sterilizations : NPR

21.9.13

California Seeks Answers On Questionable Prison Sterilizations : NPR: When some of these sterilizations came to light this summer, lawmakers demanded answers from prison health care officials. In response, prison officials released documents that revealed hundreds of female inmates have been sterilized since 1997. They also produced a 1999 memo directing tubal ligation in post-partum care. Clark Kelso, the federal receiver for prison health care in California, spoke to lawmakers at a recent hearing about the memo's directive. "We don't know why — it's very long ago," Kelso said. "We don't know why that particular decision was reached ... but that was what doctors in the field were told." After a federal court ruled human rights abuses were taking place under California state leadership, it appointed the federal receiver to take control of the state's prison health care. But the sterilizations continued.