"As soon as he found out that I had five kids, he suggested that I look into getting it done. The closer I got to my due date, the more he talked about it," said Christina Cordero, 34, who spent two years in prison for auto theft. "He made me feel like a bad mother if I didn’t do it."

Cordero, released in 2008 and now living in Upland, agreed to the procedure. "Today," she said, "I wish I would have never had it done."

The allegations echo those made nearly a half-century ago, when forced sterilizations of prisoners, the mentally ill and the poor were commonplace in California. State lawmakers officially banned such practices in 1979.

via Female inmates sterilized in California prisons without approval – Health and Medicine – The Sacramento Bee.