Controversy is swirling after a judge from one county instituted a new program that would shave jail time for people who get surgeries that would prevent them from having children.
Reports indicate that the standing order was signed by General Sessions Judge Sam Benningfield in eastern Tennessee’s White County. In exchange for reducing a sentence by 30 days, male inmates can get vasectomies and female inmates can get Nexplanon implants that would prevent them from getting pregnant for up to four years.
The Tennessee Department of Health will perform the procedures at no cost to the inmates.
So far, a reported 32 women and 38 men have signed up. Benningfield said he wants to prevent children from being born into a drug-infested environment or being drug addicts themselves.
“I hope to encourage them to take personal responsibility and give them a chance, when they do get out, not to be burdened with children,” Benningfield said in one report. “This gives them a chance to get on their feet and make something of themselves.”
The judge calls the option a win-win situation, saying that even if two or three children are not born as a result of drug addiction he will be successful.
Opponents of the order say he is violating people’s constitutional rights and question whether the order is even legal. District Attorney Bryant Dunaway and the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee have taken issue with the plan.
“Offering a so-called ‘choice’ between jail time and coerced contraception or sterilization is unconstitutional,” said Hedy Weinberg, ACLU-TN executive director. “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.”
