Two million Americans are currently living inside prisons, and although less than 10 percent of them are women, that statistic belies the fact that women are the fastest growing prison population in the United States—since 1980, the number of incarcerated women has risen by almost 500 percent. The steady increase in women's imprisonment rates is just one aspect of our culture's obsession with incarceration (we currently hold the dubious title of world leader in locking up its own citizens), fueled by an aggressive for-profit prison industry and a disturbing reluctance to engage in an honest national conversation about poverty, mental illness, drugs, and systemic discrimination, among other things.

In California, where 170,000 people are currently behind bars, the female incarcerated population has increased 43.6 percent over the last 15 years. Approximately 70 percent of these women are serving sentences for nonviolent drug- or property-related offenses, thanks to restrictive sentencing laws and aggressive three-strikes policies. Many of them are already mothers, and many of them enter the prison system pregnant or will become pregnant while serving out their sentences. Medical neglect of prisoners—especially when it comes to reproductive health—is commonplace (it's been estimated that someone dies each day in California prisons due to gross medical neglect). Women are often denied screening and treatment for cervical and other reproductive cancers and for sexually transmitted diseases, and pregnant women often receive grossly inadequate pre- and post-natal care, which has been known to result in preventable miscarriages. California outlawed the shackling of female inmates during labor in 2005, but human rights organizations like the Oakland-based Justice NOW that work directly with women in prison report that the practice has continued. Once women give birth, their infants are usually placed in state custody.

You don't have to be a prison abolitionist to recognize that this situation isn't helping anybody—not women, not their children, not their communities, and not the communities that are allegedly being "kept safe" by these women's incarceration. Which is why it's so disappointing that, under the guise of fixing the problem, legislation recently proposed by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's so-called "Gender-Responsive Strategies Commission" would actually make the situation worse. After identifying 4,500 women who should not be in state prison, the Commission proposed that they be relocated (or, in an interesting choice of words, "released") into "community-based treatment centers." Sounds great, until you realize that these "mini-prisons" are actually a thinly veiled attempt to hand new prison construction contracts to private contractors, thereby freeing up 4,500 beds for new inmates—which means that the whole plan is just a convoluted way to expand California's prison system. Maybe that's why one of the bill's original co-authors withdrew her support for the package, calling it "a fraud." Unfortunately, the proposal was reintroduced this year, despite opposition from its former co-sponsor.

Even more disturbingly, the Commission's Health Care Subcommittee has appropriated the language of "choice" in its recommendations for addressing female inmates' health needs. Specifically, it has recommended offering free "elective sterilization, either post-partum or coinciding with cesarean section" to female prisoners in labor. In order to get around the "elective" problem (since the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation won't cover elective surgeries), the Commission's recommendation is to reclassify sterilization of female prisoners as "medically necessary" in the Inmate Medical Services Policies and Procedures.

Just like relocating women to new "mini-prisons" doesn't address the fact that 4,500 women are currently being incarcerated unnecessarily, offering sterilization to a woman in labor who has just endured a pregnancy in prison, and who knows that as soon as she gives birth, the state will take her child away from her, is not giving that woman a "choice." As Justice NOW points out in its response to the Commission's recommendations:

When people in prison so desperately need yet are denied access to any other elective, "non-necessary" medical treatment such as preventative dental care, reconstructive plastic surgery following gross injury, and special diets for people with serious medical conditions such as diabetes, while affirmatively offering sterilization to a woman in labor can be suggested "medically necessary," the motive is clear.

For more information, visit Justice NOW.

Further resources on women, prisons, and reproductive justice:

• Ten Reasons Why Prisons are Bad for Reproductive Freedom

• The Birth Attendants (providing doula services to incarcerated women in Washington State)

• Lockdown on Life: Stories from Women Behind Bars (National Radio Project)

• Gender Violence and the Prison-Industrial Complex