Sunday, January 17, 2010

Sterilize the Poor?



When a Welfare-collecting mother of nine was allegedly sterilized against her will, she was shocked by the outpouring of public support—for the doctors who did it.

When Tessa Savicki checked into Baystate Medical Center on December 18, 2006, for a Caesarean section, she didn't know it was the last baby she would ever give birth to. Laying in the O.R. with her daughter at her side, the morning after she had delivered a healthy baby boy, she claims she overheard her surgeons make two cryptic remarks. “I heard the doctor on the left side say ‘left one’s done,’” she says, “then the doctor on the right side says, ‘right one’s done.’ I just looked at my daughter because, honestly, I didn’t know what they were talking about."

What she now thinks what they were talking about was a tubal ligation. When Savicki's C-section was over, instead of being fitted for the IUD she says she had asked for, her doctors tied her tubes, leaving her sterile for life. She is now suing the attending physicians and the Springfield, Massachusetts, hospital, which told her last May that it cannot find any consent form for the sterilization procedure. She filed her lawsuit on December 15.

Click HERE to read The Daily Beast- Sterilized for Being Poor