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.”

  • LibertyLizard
    12·
    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.