Compulsory sterilization
On 1 February 2013, "United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture (SRT) issued a report on abusive practices in health care settings that has important implications for LGBT people and people with intersex conditions" and:[8] In section 88, the SRT says States should:repeal any law allowing intrusive and irreversible treatments, including forced genital-normalizing surgery, involuntary sterilization, unethical experimentation, medical display, "reparative therapies" or "conversion therapies", when enforced or administered without the free and informed consent of the person concerned.
[8]In May 2014, the World Health Organization, OHCHR, UN Women, UNAIDS, UNDP, UNFPA, and UNICEF issued a joint statement on "Eliminating forced, coercive, and otherwise involuntary sterilization".
[14] In the 1977 textbook Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment, authors Paul and Anne Ehrlich, and John Holdren discuss a variety of means to address human overpopulation, including the possibility of compulsory sterilization.
[30] Rebecca Lee wrote in the Berkeley Journal of International Law that, as of 2015[update], twenty-one Council of Europe member states require proof of sterilization in order to change one's legal sex categorization.
[36] On 16 December 1982, Bangladesh's military ruler Lieutenant General Hussain Muhammad Ershad launched a two-year mass sterilization program for Bangladeshi women and men.
[citation needed] The person's sex, the sponsor and workload in the sterilization center, and the dose of sedatives administered to women were significantly associated with specific postoperative complaints.
[50] Dalsgaard examined sterilization practices in Brazil; analyzing the choices of women who opt for this type of reproductive healthcare in order to prevent future pregnancies and so they can accurately plan their families.
[51] While many women choose this form of contraception, there are many societal factors that impact this decision, such as poor economic circumstances, low rates of employment, and Catholic religious mandates that stipulate sterilization as less harmful than abortion.
[78] A 2005 report by the Czech government's independent ombudsman, Otakar Motejl, identified dozens of cases of coercive sterilization between 1979 and 2001, and called for criminal investigations and possible prosecution against several healthcare workers and administrators, re Law on Atrocities relevant pre-1990, CR (ChR).
[79] The time period of 1964–1970 started Colombia's population policy development, including the foundation of PROFAMILIA and through the Ministry of Health the family planning program promoted the use of IUDs, the Pill, and sterilization as the main avenues for contraception.
[93] Guatemala is one country that resisted family planning programs, largely due to lack of governmental support, including civil war strife, and strong opposition from both the Catholic Church and Evangelical Christians until 2000, and as such, has the lowest prevalence of contraceptive usage in Latin America.
[96] Stopping short of forced sterilization, the national government enacted an incentive program for a family planning initiative that began in 1976 in an attempt to lower the exponentially increasing population.
It further ordered the implementation of established legal, medical and technical standards for sterilization [...] Women were made to lay on bare mattresses for the surgeries, with no post-surgery recuperation facilities.
In places like Bhubaneshwar, Odisha and Ferozpur, Uttar Pradesh, the doctors conducting surgeries would use bicycle pumps instead of an insufflator, to introduce air into the women's abdomens (as reported by Shreelatha Menon).
While many population control policies may appear benign on their face, upon further investigation the stated medical reasons for sterilization and the identification of groups to which the law applies are revealed to be morally and legally suspect.
In the late 2000s, reports in the Israeli media claimed that injections of long-acting contraceptive Depo-Provera had been forced on hundreds of Ethiopian-Jewish immigrants both in transit camps in Ethiopia and after their arrival in Israel.
The court stated that forcing the sterilization of the plaintiff, a transgender woman, as a requirement to change her gender on her Japanese family registry certificate was a restriction on "her freedom not to harm herself against her will".
[125] Civil Society Organizations such as Balance, Promocion para el Desarrollo y Juventud, A.C., have received in the last years numerous testimonies of women living with HIV in which they inform that misinformation about the virus transmission has frequently lead to compulsory sterilization.
[126] In Peru, President Alberto Fujimori (in office from 1990 to 2000) has been accused of genocide and crimes against humanity as a result of the Programa Nacional de Población, a sterilization program put in place by his administration.
[128][129] During his presidency, Fujimori put in place a program of forced sterilizations against indigenous people (mainly the Quechuas and the Aymaras), in the name of a "public health plan", presented on 28 July 1995.
Documents proved that President Fujimori was informed, each month, of the number of sterilizations done, by his former Ministers of Health, Eduardo Yong Motta (1994–96), Marino Costa Bauer (1996–1999) and Alejandro Aguinaga (1999–2000).
[147] In one specific case in 2015, the Court of Protection of the United Kingdom ruled that a woman with six children and an IQ of 70 should be sterilized for her own safety because another pregnancy would have been a "significantly life-threatening event" for her and the fetus and was not related to eugenics.
[149] Thomas C. Leonard, professor at Princeton University, describes American eugenics and sterilization as ultimately rooted in economic arguments and further as a central element of Progressivism alongside minimum wage laws, restricted immigration, and the introduction of pension programs.
The investigations sparked by her case, which is featured in the documentary Belly of the Beast, showed hundreds of inmates had been sterilized in prisons without proper consent as late as 2010, even though the practice was by then illegal.
In September 2020, Mexico demanded more information from U.S. authorities about medical procedures that were performed upon illegal immigrants in detention centers, after allegations that six Mexican women were sterilized without their consent.
[189] Some scholars argue the extensive consent process and 30-day waiting period go beyond preventing instances of coercion and serve as a barrier to desired sterilization for women relying on public insurance.
[197] Such rhetoric combined with eugenics ideology of reducing "population growth among a particular class or ethnic group because they are considered...a social burden," was the philosophical basis for the 1937 birth control legislation enacted in Puerto Rico.
[197] There has been much debate and scholarly analysis concerning the legitimacy of choice given to Puerto Rican women in regard to sterilization, reproduction, and birth control, as well as with the ethics of economically motivated mass-sterilization programs.
[210] The current policy was allegedly instituted by Islam Karimov under Presidential Decree PP-1096, which is titled: "on additional measures to protect the health of the mother and child, the formation of a healthy generation",[212] and which came into force in 2009.
In the laws regarding gender recognition, this requirement is called the 'inability to reproduce', a choice of words that makes it sound a lot less threatening than 'forced sterilisation'"),[223] Estonia,[224] Switzerland,[225][226] Iceland,[227] and some countries in Latin America (including Panama).
