Quote of the Day

[Content Note: War on agency; rape culture; medical malfeasance.]

"Being treated like I was less than human produced in me a despair. [State prison officials] are the real repeat offenders. They repeatedly offended me by denying me my right to dignity and humanity."—Kimberly Jeffries, a former inmate at Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla, California, who was pressured by a prison doctor to have a tubal ligation (a sterilization procedure) while she was "sedated and strapped to a surgical table for a C-section in 2010." She refused. But nearly 150 female inmates in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation were sterilized from 2006 to 2010, "without required state approvals" and often (or always) without consent, following coercion by prison medical staff.

Naturally, Dr. James Heinrich, Valley State's OB-GYN, says that the women making allegations of coerced sterilization are liars: "They all wanted it done. If they come a year or two later saying, 'Somebody forced me to have this done,' that's a lie. That's somebody looking for the state to give them a handout."

Sure. They all wanted it. Amazing how a man who is alleged to be hostile to consent sounds exactly like a rape apologist.

Note that Heinrich is accusing a group of women—who are probably disproportionately women of color—of looking for "a handout" after being sterilized. Just like poor women—who are also disproportionately women of color—are looking for "a handout" when they have children. Same old welfare queen shit about how poor women use their reproduction to scam the state, uttered by the masters of projection who try to wield the state's power to control their reproduction.