Sunday Gazette-Mail from Charleston, West Virginia • Page 82

SANTA BARBARA, CALIF. ecendy Nancy Hernandez, 21, a tender wisp of a girl, 4 feet 11, 95 pounds, sallow-skinned and underfed but with large, brown, liquid eyes, soft-spoken and shy, California-born of Mexican descent, was arrested here. Nancy was charged with violating Section 11556 of the Health and Safety Code, namely of being in a room where marijuana was smoked by others. In California this offense is a misdemeanor. It calls for a maximum punishment of six months in the county jail.

Nancy Hernandez pleaded guilty to the charge and applied to Municipal Judge Frank Kearney for probation. The judge referred the matter to-the probation department for investigation and allowed the wet-eyed, frightened little Mrs. Hernandez to be released without bail pending a hearing. On the hearing date the probation officer filed a report with the court. It revealed that local police, armed with a search warrant, had entered the apartment of Joseph Sanchez and discovered there, in addition to Sanchez, Nancy Hernandez.

On searching the apartment they found marijuana and heroin. Nancy Hernandez admitted quickly to the probation officer that Joe Sanchez was her lover, that he was a narcotics user, that she was not, that they had been living together for two months, that he was the father of her illegitimate daughter, 62 days old. She also readily confessed that the Welfare Department was supporting her and the child. Delving into Nancy's background, the probation officer learned that she had married Tony Hernandez in Los Angeles in 1962 and had a 2-year-old daughter by him. She obtained an interlocutory divorce decree from Hernandez in Santa Barbara on Dec.

3, 1965. Her divorce would be final on Dec. 3,1966. Hernandez, father of her first baby, was supporting his daughter. The probation officer reported that Nancy came from a respectable family.

Her father, a construction worker born in Texas, had been married to her mother, born in Arizona, for almost 25 years. Nancy was likeable, cooperative and honest, but easily led. She seemed genuinely sorry for the offense she had committed. She had never before been arrested. PROVISO FOR PROBATION The probation officer felt strongly that she would be amenable to probation.

He recommended that die court sentence her to six months in the county jail but that the sentence be suspended and Nancy placed on probation for three years. Judge Kearney read the probation report and agreed to grant probation to Nancy Hernandez providing she, in turn, agreed to be sterilized. Nancy agreed, but she says now, "I didn't really know what I was doing. SHOULD THIS WOMAN BE ALLOWED TO HAVE MORE CHILDREN? by LLOYD SHEARER Showing mail from all over world, Nancy Hernandez, center of sterilization case, poses with daughter. The probation officer mentioned sterilization to me a few minutes before I came up before the judge.

The way he explained it I thought I could still have children even after I was sterilized. After all, I only went to El Monte High School for one year. I don't know very much about biology. And I certainly didn't want to go to jail. So I said, Tes, I 1 would've said yes to anything.

Who wants to go to jail for six months and leave two infants behind? Who would take care of diem? But later when I got home I discussed sterilization with my family. They told me to phone my doctor to get all the details about such an operation. That's when I decided that I would much rather go to jail than give up my right to have children. That's when I learned something about sterilization." What is sterilization? Most people know relatively little about the procedure. They confuse or associate it with birth control, castration, loss of sexual appetite, Nazi tortures perpetrated upon the Jewish people, population control in India, punishment for sex criminajs or the new basis for harmony in strained marriages.

Sterilization, in fact, is the surgical procedure in which a woman is rendered permanently incapable of conceiving a child or a man of fathering one. It is not to be confused with birth control, for instead of being temporary, it is generally irrevocable. IS THE OPERATION SIMPLE? For a man, sterilization is achieved by a relatively simple operation called a vasectomy, during whkh the tubes carrying the sperm cells to the urethra are cut and tied. The operation is frequently performed in the doctor's office under a local anesthetic, and the risk entailed is minimal. The result of the operation is that the male can engage in sexual intercourse without fathering children.

For a woman sterilization involves major surgery. Her abdomen is opened. Both Fallopian tubes are exposed. Each tube is tied with a suture, and the tied- off segment, about one-half inch of each tube, is then cut out. This prevents the egg from reaching the uterus, making fertilization impossible.

The risk involved is about equal to removing an appendix. Contrary to what is commonly believed, sterilization does not alter the physiology of the man or woman, because the ovaries and die testes are not involved. It should not alter sexuality, either, since it doesn't interfere with die function of die sex glands. But as one prominent doctor explains it: "Since sex life is so dominated by die mind, one may discover dial sexual activity is affected by sterilization." In some cases it so relieves a woman from die anxiety of unwanted pregnancy that it stimulates her sexual activity and response. In odier cases it brings on a guilt feeling which may well destroy her sex life.

The sterilization operation can be reversed to rejoin the tubes and restore fertility--and this was superficially explained to Nancy Hernandez--but what probation department and Judge Kearney did not explain to her was that die probability of success in such a case is at best 50-50, and that sterilization for women must realistically be considered irreversible. Parade Aug. 7.1966.