Salon - A Tennessee county has greenlit a modern-day eugenics program under the guise of offering prisoners a better future. Judge Sam Benningfield of White County issued an order in May that reduces jail sentences for inmates who agree to undergo birth control procedures. For male inmates, a credit of just 30 days is offered in exchange for vasectomies, which are permanent. Women who sign up for the program receive a Nexplanon implant, which is effective for up to four years. ABC 15 reports that 32 women and 38 men have enrolled in the program.
The program is described as “voluntary,” though it stretches the definition of that term, basically putting inmates in the position of bartering their fertility for sentencing reductions. Considering that prison sentences are often the collateral damage of life issues from poverty to addiction to crime, it seems callous to ask already vulnerable people to forego a basic human right to shave time off their sentences. The ACLU argues that pretending the program gives prisoners real options is deceptive and perhaps unconstitutional.
“Offering a so-called ‘choice’ between jail time and coerced contraception or sterilization is unconstitutional,” Tennessee ACLU head Hedy Weinberg wrote in a statement. “Such a choice violates the fundamental constitutional right to reproductive autonomy and bodily integrity by interfering with the intimate decision of whether and when to have a child, imposing an intrusive medical procedure on individuals who are not in a position to reject it.”
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