Less than a week after Jeffrey Thompson was grilled by the Senate Rules Committee, he announced the state's prisons were changing their dental policies for women seeking to see their children.
Thompson, the prison system's assistant secretary for health care policy, was rebuked by Democrats and Republicans in the Senate last Thursday for a policy that led to women inmates pulling their teeth in order to enter rehabilitation programs.
"The choices that these women were given -- either pull out your teeth or don't see your baby -- is unconscionable," Sen. Jim Battin, R-Palm Desert, said at the hearing.
On Friday, Thompson told the San Jose Mercury News that the extractions policy has ended.
"It's just the right thing to do," he told the paper, which first reported the policy in April.
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