The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights has sharply rebuked a federal judge in Georgia for threatening to jail a woman if she bears another illegitimate child.

The Milwaukee-based national rights organization criticized statements attributed to Judge Wilbur D. Owens, Jr., of Macon. After finding Mrs. Zola Humphries guilty of stealing a social security check, Judge Owens sentenced her to five years’ probation. According to news reports, though, he also threatened to send her to jail if she ever bears another child out of wedlock, then reportedly told her, “If I had the power to compel you to go to a local doctor and have your tubes tied, I would do so.” The judge also suggested that there is a direct casual relationship between bearing children and committing crime.

In a letter to Judge Owens, the Catholic League expressed outrage at his “shocking abuse of power and disregard for fundamental civil rights.”

The League said the threat to jail Mrs. Humphries was clearly not directed against the offense of which she was found guilty, but rather against the fact that she had previously borne children out of wedlock.

Illegitimacy, the League reminded Judge Owens, is certainly a serious social problem, but it is not a crime. Moreover, the League reminded him that the United States Supreme Court has recognized child bearing, regardless of marital status, as a fundamental right. Accordingly, the League told him, “It is extremely improper for a federal judge to threaten criminal penalties for the exercise of that right.”

Even more distressing, the League said, was the judge’s reported remark that he would compel Mrs. Humphries to be sterilized if he had the power. “The practice of using involuntary sterilization as a punishment for crime,” the League said, “was promoted by the proto-Nazi eugenics movement whose racist and elitist doctrines are repudiated by all decent people.”

The League cautioned Judge Owens that it is neither a just punishment nor a wise method of rehabilitation to threaten Mrs. Humphries with the loss of her freedom for the exercise of a constitutional right.