It sounds like something from Indira Gandhi's ill-fated population control campaign in the 1970s: a woman enters hospital to deliver her baby and discovers afterwards that her tubes have been tied and that she will never have children again. But in happened in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 2006. Now 35-year-old Tessa Savicki is suing Baystate Medical Center, three doctors and two nurses, claiming that they violated her reproductive rights.

However, instead of sympathy, Ms Savicki was heaped with abuse. News stories in the Boston Herald attracted hundreds of hostile comments. The problem is that Ms Savicki's life is in a mess and she and her children are on welfare. She already has 9 children from several different men, although 8 of them came while she was in what she calls "committed relationships". She first became a mother at 13. She is engaged now, and wants to have a tenth child with her partner. “It’s not like I’m jumping from guy to guy to guy to get pregnant,” she told the Herald. “I’m trying to make a healthy home for my children.”

Massachusetts is probably the most liberal of all of the American states, but even there hip-pocket nerves hurt more than bleeding hearts. Taxpayers there were angered by the prospect of having to pay for the offspring of the local underclass. "I... bet that all nine crumb-snatchers have different baby daddys," said one. "If these hospitals did this more often, then there wouldn't be so many stupid people in the world." “I’m shocked at the virulence,” said Ms Savicki’s attorney Max Borten, a former obstetrician. “It’s borderline bigotry against somebody that is on public assistance, against somebody that has more than 2.1 children, against somebody that doesn’t have a college degree.” ~ Boston Herald, Jan 3; Boston Herald, Jan 6