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Under California's new "chemical castration" law, a 13-year-old male who has oral sex with a consenting 12 -year-old can be forced to undergo surgical castration, or else face weekly injections for the rest of his life with a drug that mimics its effects. After a second sex offense, castration "chemical" or surgical is mandatory.

That is just one bizarre implication of the draconian new law, signed September 17 by California governor Pete Wilson. The measure forces persons twice convicted of certain sex offenses including acts of consensual sex to submit upon parole to injections of medroxyprogesterone acetate, commonly called by its trade name, Depo Provera. To avoid the injections, an individual can opt instead for surgery to remove the testicles or ova ries. Sentencing judges can, at their discretion, also impose castration on first-time offenders.

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Boasting that it is "the toughest anti-crime measure in the country," California state assemblyman Bill Hoge, Republican of Pasadena, introduced the legislation last February. Propelled by anti-crime and sex hysteria that has become the leitmotif of California politics, the bill sailed through the legislature. The openly lesbian mem bers of the state assembly, representatives Carol Migden and Sheila Kuehl, were among the only vocal oppo nents.

The new law imposes castration as a punishment for an arbitrary selection of sex offenses involving persons younger than 13. Some illegal sex acts including sodomy are covered only if committed with force or coercion. Others are included even if consensual. In some cases, there must be at least a ten-year age difference; in other cases, such as oral sex, none is required (see sidebar).

Lethal injections?

The law requires that injections with Depo Provera begin a week before the person convicted is released from state custody. They continue either until the Department of Prisons deems them no longer necessary, or until the parolee agrees to be surgically castrated.

Jim Branham, an aide to Assemblyman Hoge, the bill's author, told The Guide that legislators intended that the injections continue for life. But Branham granted that it would be left to the courts to decide whether the state could force the drug on persons after their parole ended. Convicted murderers in California sometimes remain on parole for life, but otherwise parole usually ends within three years. However lawmakers could extend it for sex offenders at any time.

"When I first read this law, it struck me as reminiscent of the bizarre and barbaric social experiments tried in Nazi Germany," says Kelli Evans, staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, one of the few groups that lobbied against the legislation.

"We agree that children and adults have a right to protection from sexual abuse," Evans says, but she contends that the constitution limits the state's power to intrude on citizens' bodies. "You can think of many situation where the government could use a drug to control behaviors it dislikes testosterone on effeminate boys, estrogen on butchy girls, Ritalin on children considered hyperactive," Evans said. "That's why this bill is so incredibly dangerous."

In men, Depo Provera reduces the amount testosterone in the blood to levels typical of prepubescent boys. Some claim that this reduces the intensity of sexual feelings as well. But this result has been found only in studies with men who took the drug voluntarily, received counseling, and who desired that outcome.

Does a possibly dulled sexual urge translate into a decreased likelihood to rape or engage in illegal sex? That view has been touted most prominently by John Money, a Johns Hopkins University psychologist, and others who regard sexual desire as purely biological, hormonal, and consciously uncontrollable. But the California Psychiatric Association opposed the law on the grounds there was no evidence it would reduce sex crimes. And critics argue that there are myriad reasons why people engage in illegal sex, and that, anyway, not all sex that is against the law is wrong.

A gendered drug

The absurdity of the law is patent in the case of female offenders, who are also subject to the new punishment. On women, Depo Provera has an entirely different effect: it is a contraceptive, which has been used around the world by some 30 million women since the late 60s.

Approval for Depo Provera as a contraceptive came in the US only in 1992, because of concerns about the drug's side effects and possible cancer-causing role. Critics contend these concerns remain unresolved. While men "chemically castrated" under the new law will still be able to reproduce though Depo Provera may deform sperm California women who are forced onto the drug will effectively be barred by the state from having children.

Everyone expects a constitutional challenge to the law once it comes into effect next January 1. "They could argue injections of the drug constitute cruel and unusual punishment not just because of what it's supposed to do, but because of its possible side effects," says Grace Suarez, head of research at the San Francisco Public Defenders Office.

Side effects and adverse reactions to Depo Provera include nausea, depression, hair loss, insomnia, blood clotting, stroke, hepatitis, pulmonary embolism, gallbladder obstruction, and eye lesions. The drug could se verely damage the health of persons with liver disease, breast cancer, or gonadal tumors.

Though the FDA says Depo Provera is safe as a female contraceptive, when used on men for "chemical castra tion" it is given in quantities some 50 times higher. That Depo Provera is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration for this purpose led the Michigan State Supreme Court to rule that forcing it on sex offenders was cruel and unusual punishment. The Montana State Supreme Court also rejected as unconstitutional a sex offender therapy program mandating Depo Provera, a decision which the US Supreme Court chose not to reconsider in 1992.

Some prison wardens have considered injecting all male inmates with the drug to reduce incidence of homo sexual activity. In a 1988 report, the Congressional Office of Technological Assessment concluded that "such broad and general use of the drug might meet the Supreme Court's test for cruel and unusual punishment: 'shocking the conscience of reasonably civilized people.'"

"Any time we have government officials trying to control human sexuality or reproduction, it's inherently oppressive and subject to abuse," says the ACLU's Evans. Around the Western world in the 20th century doctors and psychiatrists castrated, lobotomized, and imposed "aversion therapy" on homosexuals and others deemed sex deviants.

"There is a history of abuses in this country," Evans notes. "In the early 1900s, California forcibly sterilized thousands of women, mostly poor women of color, and the reason the state most often gave was that these women were harmful to children." Once again, dishonest rhetoric about protecting children drives the state to mutilate the bodies of the despised. **

Editor's Note: from The Guide, October 1996