Racism charge in sterilisation hearing

AN OBSTETRICIAN has been ordered by a court here to pay $5 (about £2) in damages to a young black woman because he violated her civil rights by dismissing her from a hospital with a one-day-old baby after she refused sterilisation.
Another woman, who had agreed to the sterilisation by signing a consent form, did not receive any compensation from the jury. Terming the jury's findings "a slap on the wrist," lawyers for the two women said that an appeal would be made. Defence attorneys indicated that they may also file an appeal, although they said no decision has been reached.
Commenting on the case, Bishop Ernest Unterkoefler of Charleston said that although the court decision found Dr Pierce in violation of a federal law regarding a constitutional right, it "did not balance the scales of justice." "Coercive sterilisation," the bishop continued, "is alien to personal freedom of con science; it denies the inalienable right to conceive and bear children; and it invades the privacy of the individual and in fact does violence to the person." The federal damage suit was brought here by Mrs Virgil Walker, 25, and Mrs Shirley Brown, 26, against Dr Clovis Pierce on the grounds that his demand that they be sterilised before he would accept them as maternity patients violated their civil rights and was racially motivated. At issue was Dr Pierce's practice of telling welfare mothers who have as many as three children that they must agree to be sterilised before he would deliver their babies under Medicaid, a federal programme that pays some medical costs of the poor.
Mrs Brown, who refused to be sterilised in 1973 and is now expecting her fourth child, was awarded $5 in damages for the civil rights violation, but her charges of racial discrimination were dismissed by the jury.
During the week-long trial. Mrs Walker said she agreed to the sterilisation in 1973 because Dr Pierce told her that he would stop her welfare payments if she did not agree to be sterilised following the birth of her fourth child. Sterilisation of some welfare mothers by Dr Pierce and two other Aiken • County obstetricians was reported by an Aiken County commissioner two years ago. Hospital records showed that from January 1 to June 30, 1973, 17 of 18 patients sterilised were black. 10 were under 25 years of age, and 17 were unmarried.
After a 10-week investigation by the state, Dr Pierce was told late in 1973 that he could no longer treat obstetrical patients on Medicaid, which had paid him over $6 0,0 0 0 (about £28.000) in fees during an 18month period prior to the investigation.
At the time, the obstetricians stated that their policies in treating patients were based on their social views and that it was !heir right to decide whom they would treat, Following the judge's instruc Lions, the jury of five women and a man decided in favour of Dr Pierce's co-defendants, the administrator of the Aiken County Hospital and the county director of social services, who were also charged with racial discrimination and violating civil rights.
Joseph Levin, legal director of the Southern Poverty Law Centre in Montgomery, said the judgment against Dr Pierce will "narrowthe number of doctors who are willing to impose social views on their patients."
Dr Pierce's attorney, Bruce Shaw, said the verdict against his client may deplete the number of doctors participating ill the Medicaid programme "because of the dangers involved,"