Moonlight Pulido, 58, is a formerly incarcerated Native woman held at California’s Valley State Prison for Women from 1996 to 2022. While imprisoned there, she had what was supposed to be a routine pap smear from a Dr. Heinrich with the California Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation in late summer 2005. He subsequently told Moonlight that she had two growths that had the potential to turn into cancer.
“Cancer was scary for me,” Moonlight says, “because my son had cancer at the age of 12. The doctor asked me if I would be willing to have the growths removed. I said yes, thinking that this would be a life-saving procedure, without a thought that the doctor would do something other than that. Later, I was in the hospital for three days, feeling unwell with unusual body sensations such as sweat drenching my body.” Something was wrong.
Then Moonlight had an exam for a dressing change with a woman nurse. What she learned about what the male doctor did was a bombshell. He had performed a full hysterectomy on her, according to the nurse. “I was in shock,” Moonlight says, “and speechless.”
Angry and hurt, Moonlight subsequently saw Dr. Heinrich. She confronted him, asking what he had done to her. After closing the exam door to ensure that nobody could hear his answer, Moonlight recalls the doctor saying that he was tired of nonwhite girls getting pregnant upon release from prison, having kids that end up on taxpayer-supported welfare.
Years later, Moonlight applied for financial restitution for her medical maltreatment as a state prisoner, and received that compensation through the California Victim Compensation Board (CalVCB) recently.
Moonlight is not alone as a victim of forced and involuntary sterilization. In brief, that is why the CalVCB is busy tracking down remaining victims of forced and involuntary sterilization. To this end, the CalVCB began to air radio and TV spots to contact Californians who have survived involuntary and forced sterilizations in state mental hospitals and prisons.
Capitol Weekly asked the CDCR to answer a question on how Moonlight’s compensation affects future litigation against the CDCR and its doctor, in terms of accountability for criminal and possible civil charges. The following unattributed reply follows.
“California Correctional Health Care Services (CCHCS) and the federal receiver for prison health care in California take the issue of forced or involuntary sterilization very seriously. When CCHCS was made aware that non-medically necessary procedures resulting in sterilization were being performed on our patients, the procedures were stopped, and CCHCS provided comprehensive training to prevent such procedures from occurring in the future. This training is still being provided today, as Title 15 of the California Code of Regulations very specifically states that inmate procedures that are not medically necessary are not to be performed. CCHCS is now actively involved in California’s Forced or Involuntary Sterilization Compensation Program,” which the CalVCB administers as part of the 2021-22 state budget package.
Under the state Capitol dome as the 2023-24 budget package proceeds, Assemblywoman Wendy Carrillo (D-L.A.) has been a major backer of the CalVCB’s Forced or Involuntary Sterilization Compensation Program, which compensates survivors. “It is the first reparations program of its kind,” she said in a statement. “Nothing can ever undo this wrong, but we are making progress in recognizing the injustice.” CalVCB has an online portal for survivors of state-sponsored forced or unknown sterilization can apply for compensation until Dec. 31.
California, as Assemblywoman Carrillo notes, had eugenics, or so-called scientific racism, laws on the books that allowed the state to forcibly, or without disclosure, to sterilize people until 1979 in state hospital and in state prisons to 2010. That Golden State history bears a striking similarity to the rise of Nazism. In “Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law,” author James Q. Whitman compares the two nations’ jurisprudence and politics in the birth of the infamous anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws (Princeton University Press, 2017). In sum, German fascism and its handmaiden of eugenic, e.g., scientific racism, took inspiration from stateside policies and practices.
Back in California, Assemblywoman Carrillo also chairs the Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 4 on Administration, which oversees the CalVCB, and could extend the filing deadline for applications. The committee that she chairs has five members including her, plus two alternates, totaling five Democrats and two Republicans.
Meanwhile, Moonlight has retained counsel. Her plan is to pursue litigation for pain and suffering as a victim of involuntary sterilization while held in a California prison. “That doctor took a gift from me to give life that the Creator bestowed,” Moonlight says. “That is a blessing that the doctor stole from me without my consent, knowledge and permission. It is not okay.”
For information on how to apply for CalVCB’s Forced or Involuntary Sterilization Compensation Program, visit https://victims.ca.gov/forms/?vcb_service=forced-or-involuntary-sterilization-compensation-program The CalVCB keeps all communication confidential.
Seth Sandronsky lives and works in Sacramento. He is a journalist and member of the Pacific Media Workers Guild. Email sethsandronsky@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, April 1, 2023
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