Judge’s sterilization suggestion followed

Advice coercive, women’s advocate says

In her 34 years, Summer Thyme Creel has passed a lot of bad cheques, taken a lot of drugs and borne a lot of children (seven).

After her sentencing in court in Oklahoma, her involvement with cheques and drugs will stop at least temporarily, but she will never have another baby.

That’s because the judge in her case suggested, in writing, that Creel consider getting herself sterilized before the sentencing, and Creel proceeded to do just that.

The judge, Stephen Friot of Oklahoma City, had taken a guilty plea from Creel for making and cashing a counterfeit cheque in January 2017, but had to postpone subsequent sentencing hearings because Creel was either in jail or testing positive for drug use, court records show.

“It appears highly likely,” Friot wrote, “that some of Ms. Creel’s children were conceived, carried and born while Ms. Creel was a habitual user of these illicit substances.”

He noted that she had relinquished custody of six of her seven children in 2012, with the seventh born in 2016. And so the judge concluded that, at the sentencing, “Ms. Creel may, if (and only if ) she chooses to do so, present medical evidence to the court establishing that she has been rendered incapable of procreation.”

In November, she underwent a voluntary sterilization procedure.

Federal prosecutors argued the judge should not consider that fact in determining a sentence for Creel, because she “not only has a fundamental constitutional right to procreate,” but also because her decisions to do so are “irrelevant to determining a sentence.”

Creel faces a 12-month term for her counterfeit cheque scheme.

Creel’s lawyer, W. Brett Behenna, said he did not know where Friot got the idea to suggest his client undergo sterilization.

He said the judge called him and the prosecutor into chambers and read them the order.

“I was surprised,” Behenna said. “That’s a very serious thing to bring up in the context of a criminal case, and I’ve never seen it before.”

So he took it to his client. “It is my belief,” Behenna said, “that when I discussed it with Summer, she wanted to do it, 100 per cent. No coercion, no force.”

Creel’s case has echoes of America’s long history of forced sterilization, though she was not ordered to do so by the judge. The states of North Carolina, Virginia and California have apologized in recent years for state-run sterilization programs.

Eesha Pandit, a longtime women’s rights advocate, said, “Tying Ms. Creel’s sentencing to her sterilization formalizes the coercion — the threat of a harsher sentence is manipulative and dangerous, and aligns with a legacy of eugenic practices through the U.S.”