Upon first glance, it reeks of Buck v. Bell, the eugenics that was once deemed acceptable in America. After all, aren’t three generations of idiots enough? But is it the same?

A judge in White County, Tennessee has issued a standing order offering a 30-day reduction in jail time to male inmates who get vasectomies and female inmates who get a Nexplanon implant in their arms. The ACLU of Tennessee has issued the following statement in response.

“Offering a so-called ‘choice’ between jail time and coerced contraception or sterilization is unconstitutional. Such a choice violates the fundamental constitutional right to reproductive autonomy and bodily integrity by interfering with the intimate decision of whether and when to have a child, imposing an intrusive medical procedure on individuals who are not in a position to reject it. Judges play an important role in our community – overseeing individuals’ childbearing capacity should not be part of that role.”

There’s a lot of presumption packed into that statement. Is it a “so-called ‘choice'”? Is it “coerced contraception or sterilization”? Is it unconstitutional?

The position that reproductive autonomy is a fundamental constitutional right isn’t controversial anymore. People get to make the decision as to whether they want to reproduce. They get to decide with whom, when, and how. That includes people of severely limited intellectual capacity. That includes people who have been convicted or horrific sex crimes, rapists and child molesters, who some would otherwise happily sentence having their genitals cut off without anesthesia.

But the judge here isn’t imposing a forced sentence of sterilization. Rather, he’s offering defendants a 30-day reduction in jail. While it’s a really lousy deal, a mere 30 days for a vasectomy, no one has to take it. Then again, those thirty days may mean a lot more to some prisoners than another child. Heck, maybe they considered getting a vasectomy anyway, and now they can get it for free plus save 30 days in the case. Win-win!

However, it’s the coercive nature of the offer that makes the Tennessee ACLU flip out. Dangle a rotting piece of meat to a starving man and he will grab it. There will be inmates who are so desperate to get out that they will accept this terrible deal for the relief, even though they don’t want to get a vasectomy and have a fundamental right to reproduce. It might strike a watcher as a poor choice, but people make poor choices all the time. And if there was ever a place where people who make poor choices can be found, it’s jail.

Then again, for the inmate who would really like the deal, why should he be denied the trade-off that he knowingly, intelligently and voluntarily undertakes? Does he not have free agency to say yes or no to a deal that he perceives to be in his favor. You don’t have to like his deal. He does. Who are you to kill the deal and keep him in the can another 30 days? It’s not like the ACLU will take his place in a cell for that month, so what business is it of theirs to screw up his deal?

The problem stems both from the attempt to coerce an inmate to relinquish a fundamental right in exchange for 30 days off the back end, but the demonstration that those 30 days are a sham. If they served a legitimate incarceratory purpose, then the judge would be violating his duty to cut them loose. After all, what difference does it make to the person murdered by a guy who was released early that his killer had a vasectomy? Either deterrence matters or it doesn’t.

What this scheme reveals isn’t merely the use of shifty coerciveness to accomplish Buck v. Bell through the back door with the appearance of voluntariness, but that the sentence the judge is happy to trade off is unjustifiable regardless. If a prisoner can get 30 days off his sentence for something entirely unrelated to any legitimate justification for imprisonment, then the imprisonment itself is unlawful. Something needs to be cut here, and it’s not vas deferens.