State officials are reviewing a judge's order that the state pay for a woman's tubal ligation while she serves a prison sentence for killing her infant son.
'Nobody can recall anything like that happening before,' said Susan McNaughton, spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections. 'So we're going to reserve comment until our lawyers have a chance to review it.'
Allegheny County Court Judge Raymond A. Novak ordered the state to pay for tubal ligation for Danielle Hill, 20, of Pittsburgh, if she chooses the surgery while in prison.
Novak issued the order recently when he sentenced Hill to five to 10 years for third-degree murder.
Novak could have ruled that Hill must serve the maximum of 20 to 40 years.  He said he imposed a lighter sentence because Hill was suffering from depression when she killed her son. She admitted she was an irresponsible parent and said she would consider tubal ligation.'She said that having her tubes tied, which is how she referred to it, was a procedure she had been giving serious consideration to on her own, but she didn't have the means to pay for it,' said Hill's lawyer, Sumner Parker, an assistant public defender.
The surgery usually costs $1,000 to $2,500.
Parker said Hill 'panicked' when she gave birth to the boy in a friend's bathtub on March 27, 1999. The infant's body was found six days later in a garbage truck. Hill later pleaded no contest to third-degree murder.
A pre-sentence report said Hill posed a danger only to her unwanted children. She failed to seek prenatal care when she was pregnant twice before, at ages 15 and 18. Her two daughters, both preschoolers, live in California with their father.