Sterilization of the Poor: Judge Gesell’s Roadblock

Abstract

There is unconlroverted evidence in the record that minors and other incompetents have been sterilized with federal funds and that an indefinite number of poor people have been improperly coerced into accepting a sterilization operation under the threat that various federally supported welfare benefits would be withdrawn unless they submitted to irreversible sterilization. [Judge Gerhard A. Gesell] FEDERAL Judge Gehard Gesell, who sits in the United States District Court in Washington, D.C., is known to the bar as an activist liberal judge. He has amplified his reputation once again in a very forceful decision that strikes down the validity of . . .