Misplaced Pages

Part of a series on
Discrimination
Forms Institutional Structural Statistical Taste-based
Attributes Age Caste Class Dialect Disability Genetic Hair texture Height Language Looks Mental disorder Race / Ethnicity Skin color Scientific racism Rank Sex Sexual orientation Species Size Viewpoint
Social Arophobia Acephobia Adultism Anti-albinism Anti-autism Anti-homelessness Anti-drug addicts Anti-intellectualism Anti-intersex Anti-left handedness Anti-Masonry Aporophobia Audism Biphobia Clannism Elitism Ephebiphobia Social determinants of health Social determinants of health in poverty Social determinants of mental health Fatphobia Gayphobia Gerontophobia Heterosexism HIV/AIDS stigma Homophobia Leprosy stigma Lesbophobia Discrimination against men Misandry Misogyny Nepotism Pedophobia Perpetual foreigner Pregnancy Sectarianism Supremacism Aryanism Autistic Black Chauvinism Female Illusory Jewish Male Nordicism Tigraynization Ultranationalism White Transphobia 21st-century anti-trans movement in the United Kingdom Non-binary Transmisogyny Trans men Vegaphobia Xenophobia
Religious Atheism Exclusivism Baháʼí Faith Buddhism Christianity Persecution Catholicism Eastern Orthodoxy Jehovah's Witnesses LDS or Mormon Protestantism Tewahedo Orthodoxy post–Cold War era Falun Gong Hinduism Persecution Untouchability Islam Persecution Ahmadiyya Shi'ism Sufism Sunnism minority Muslim Judaism Persecution Neopaganism Rastafari Sikhism Yazidism Zoroastrianism
Ethnic/national Afghan African Albanian Arab Armenian Asian France South Africa United States Assyrian Australian Austrian Azerbaijani Black people African Americans China South Africa Bengali Bulgarian Catalan Chechen Chinese Colombian Croat Dutch English Estonian Filipino French Fulani Finnish Georgian German Greek Haitian Hazara Hungarian Igbo Indian Indigenous people Australia Canada United States Iranian Irish Italian Japanese Jewish Antisemitism New Korean Kurdish Lithuanian Malay Māori Mexican Middle Eastern Mongolian Montenegrin Nigerian Pakistani Palestinians Pashtun Polish Portuguese Quebec Romani Romanian Russian Scottish Serb Slavic Somali Spanish Tatar Thai Turkish Ukrainian Uyghur Venezuelan Vietnamese Welsh
Manifestations Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric SPLC-designated list of anti-LGBTQ hate groups Anti-LGBTQ movement in the US Anti-trans movement in the UK Anti-Zionism Blood libel Bullying Cancel culture Capital punishment for homosexuality Compulsory sterilization Corrective rape Counter-jihad Cultural genocide Defamation Democide Disability hate crime Dog whistle Domicide Economic Education Employment Eliminationism Enemy of the people Ethnic cleansing Ethnic conflict Ethnic hatred Ethnic joke Ethnocide Excellence Gender-based dress codes Cosmetics policy High heel policy Forced conversion Freak show Gay bashing Gendercide Genital modification and mutilation Genocide examples Glass ceiling Hate crime Violence against LGBTQ people Hate group Hate speech Homeless dumping Housing Indian rolling Kill Haole Day Lavender scare LGBTQ+ grooming conspiracy theory List of people killed for being transgender Lynching Mortgage Murder music Native American mascots Occupational segregation Opposition to immigration Paper genocide Persecution Pogrom Political repression Purge Racialization Religious persecution Religious terrorism Religious violence Religious war Scapegoating Segregation academy Sentencing disparity Sexual harassment Sex-selective abortion Slut-shaming Trans bashing Victimisation Violence against women White flight White genocide conspiracy theory Wife selling Witch hunt
Policies Age of candidacy Blood purity Blood quantum Crime of apartheid Disabilities Catholic Jewish Gender pay gap Gender roles Transphobia in the US House of Representatives Gerontocracy Gerrymandering Ghetto benches Internment Jewish quota Law for Protection of the Nation LGBTQ rights opposition MSM blood donation restrictions No kid zone Numerus clausus (as religious or racial quota) One-drop rule Racial quota Racial segregation Jim Crow laws Nuremberg Laws Racial steering Redlining Same-sex marriage (laws and issues prohibiting) Segregation age racial religious sexual Social exclusion Sodomy law State atheism State religion Ugly law Voter suppression
Countermeasures Affirmative action Anti-discrimination law Anti-racism Constitutional colorblindness Cultural assimilation Cultural pluralism Diversity, equity, and inclusion Diversity training Empowerment Fat acceptance movement Feminism Fighting Discrimination Hate speech laws by country Human rights Intersex human rights LGBT rights Nonviolence Racial integration Reappropriation Self-determination Social integration Toleration
Related topics Allophilia Amatonormativity Bias Cisnormativity Civil liberties Criminalization of homosexuality Dehumanization Diversity Multiculturalism Neurodiversity Ethnic penalty Figleaf Gender-blind Heteronormativity Historical eugenics Internalized oppression Intersectionality Masculism Medical model of disability autism Net bias Oikophobia Oppression Police brutality Political correctness Polyculturalism Power distance Prejudice Prisoner abuse Racial bias in criminal news in the United States Racism by country Racial color blindness Religious intolerance Reverse discrimination Reverse racism Second-generation gender bias Snobbery Social equity Social exclusion Social identity threat Social model of disability Social privilege Christian male white Social stigma Speciesism Stereotype threat The talk
v t e

Part of a series on
Genocide
Issues
List of genocides Genocides in history Effects on youth Denial Massacre Rape Incitement In relation to Colonialism / War Perpetrators, victims, and bystanders Prevention Psychology Recognition politics Risk factors Stages Types Anti-Indigenous Cultural Paper Utilitarian Studies Outline Bibliography
Related topics
Compulsory sterilization Democide Ethnic cleansing Ethnocide Forced assimilation
Category
v t e

Compulsory sterilization, also known as forced or coerced sterilization, refers to any government-mandated program to involuntarily sterilize a specific group of people. Sterilization removes a person's capacity to reproduce, and is usually done by surgical or chemical means.

Purported justifications for compulsory sterilization have included population control, eugenics, limiting the spread of HIV, and ethnic genocide.

Several countries implemented sterilization programs in the early 20th century. Although such programs have been made illegal in much of the world, instances of forced or coerced sterilizations still persist.

Affected populations

Governmental family-planning programs emerged in the late 1800s, and have continued to progress through the 21st century. During this time, feminists began advocating for reproductive choice, but eugenicists and hygienists were advocating for low-income and disabled peoples to be sterilized or have their fertility tightly regulated, in order to "clean" or "perfect" nations. The second half of the 20th century saw national governments' uptake of neo-Malthusian ideology that directly linked population growth to increased (and uncontrollable) poverty, which, during the embrace of capitalism, meant that countries were unable to economically develop due to this poverty.

Much of these governmental population control programs were focused on using sterilization as the main avenue to reduce high birth rates, even though public acknowledgement that sterilization made an impact on the population levels of the developing world is still widely lacking. Early population programs of the 20th century were marked as part of the eugenics movement, with Nazi Germany's programs providing the most well-known examples of sterilization of disabled people. In the 1970s, population control programs focused on the "third world" to help curtail over population of poverty areas that were beginning to "develop" (Duden 1992).

As of 2013, 24 countries in Europe required sterilization for legal gender recognition and 16 countries did not provide for any possibility to change legal gender at all, which meant that transgender people could have challenges applying for jobs, opening bank accounts, boarding planes, or may not be able to do these things at all. Disabled women in Europe are also common targets of forced sterilization. "'So many times, you hear it’s in the best interest of the woman,' said Catalina Devandas Aguilar, a former United Nations special rapporteur for disability rights. 'But often, it’s because it’s more convenient for the family or the institution that takes care of them.'"

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: 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. He also calls upon them to outlaw forced or coerced sterilization in all circumstances and provide special protection to individuals belonging to marginalized groups.

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". The report references the involuntary sterilization of a number of specific population groups. They include:

• Women, especially in relation to coercive population control policies, and particularly including women living with HIV, indigenous and ethnic minority girls and women. Indigenous and ethnic minority women often face "wrongful stereotyping based on gender, race and ethnicity".
  • In the United States the funding of mothers on welfare by HEW (Health, Education, and Welfare) covers roughly 90% of cost and doctors are likely to concur with the compulsory sterilization of mothers on welfare. Threats to cease welfare occur when women are hesitant to consent.
• Disabled people, especially those with intellectual disability. Women with intellectual disabilities are "often treated as if they have no control, or should have no control, over their sexual and reproductive choices". Other rationales include menstrual management for "women who have or are perceived to have difficulties coping with or managing menses, or whose health conditions (such as epilepsy) or behaviour are negatively affected by menses." Men with intellectual disabilities are also sterilized, sometimes using the justification that it provides greater sexual freedom.
• Intersex persons, who "are often subjected to cosmetic and other non-medically indicated surgeries performed on their reproductive organs, without their informed consent or that of their parents, and without taking into consideration the views of the children involved", often as a "sex-normalizing" treatment.
• Transgender persons, "as a prerequisite to receiving gender-affirmative treatment and gender-marker changes". This being a practice that the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment has described as a violation of the Yogyakarta Principles.

The report recommends a range of guiding principles for medical treatment, including ensuring patient autonomy in decision-making, and ensuring non-discrimination, accountability, and access to remedies.

As a part of human population planning

Human population planning is the practice of artificially altering the rate of growth of a human population. Historically, human population planning has been implemented by limiting the population's birth rate, usually by government mandate, and has been undertaken as a response to factors including high or increasing levels of poverty, environmental concerns, religious reasons, and overpopulation. While population planning can involve measures that improve people's lives by giving them greater control of their reproduction, some programs have exposed them to exploitation.

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. This book received renewed media attention with the appointment of Holdren as Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, largely from conservative pundits who have published scans of the textbook online. Several forms of compulsory sterilization are mentioned, including the proposal for vasectomies for men with three or more children in India in the 1960s, sterilizing women after the birth of their second or third child, birth control implants as a form of removable, long-term sterilization, a licensing system allotting a certain number of children per woman, economic and quota systems of having a certain number of children, and adding a sterilant to drinking water or food sources, although the authors are clear that no such sterilant exists nor is one in development. The authors state that most of these policies are not in practice, have not been tried, and most will likely "remain unacceptable to most societies."

Holdren stated in his confirmation hearing that he no longer supports the creation of an optimum population by the U.S. government. However, the population control policies suggested in the book are indicative of the concerns about overpopulation, also discussed in The Population Bomb a book written by Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich predicting major societal upheavals due to overpopulation. As this concern about overpopulation gained political, economic, and social currency, attempts to reduce fertility rates, often through compulsory sterilization, were results of this drive to reduce overpopulation. These coercive and abusive population control policies impacted people around the world in different ways, and continue to have social, health, and political consequences, one of which is lasting mistrust in current family planning initiatives by populations who were subjected to coercive policies like forced sterilization. Population control policies were widely critiqued by women's health movement in the 1980s and 1990s, with the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994 in Cairo initiating a shift from population control to reproductive rights and the contemporary reproductive justice movement. However, new forms of population control policies, including coercive sterilization practices are a global issue and a reproductive rights and justice issue.

By country

International law

The Istanbul Convention prohibits forced sterilization in most European countries (Article 39). Widespread or systematic forced sterilization has been recognized as a Crime against Humanity by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in the explanatory memorandum. This memorandum defines the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. It does not have universal jurisdiction, with the United States, Russia and China among the countries to exclude themselves. Rebecca Lee wrote in the Berkeley Journal of International Law that, as of 2015, twenty-one Council of Europe member states require proof of sterilization in order to change one's legal sex categorization. Lee wrote that requiring sterilization is a human rights violation and that LGBTQ-specific international treaties may need to be developed in order to protect LGBTQ human rights.

Bangladesh

Poverty

Bangladesh has a long-running government-operated civilian sterilization program as a part of its population control policy, which targets mainly poor women and men. The government offers 2,000 Bangladeshi Taka (US$18) for women who are persuaded to undergo tubal ligation and for men who are persuaded to undergo vasectomy. Women are also offered a sari and men are offered a kurta to wear for undergoing sterilization. The referrer, who persuades the woman or man to undergo sterilization gets 300 Bangladeshi Taka (US$2.70).

In 1965, the targeted number of sterilizations per month was 600–1,000 in contrast to the insertion of 25,000 IUDs, which was increased in 1978 to about 50,000 sterilizations per month on average. A 50% rise in the amount paid to men coincided with a doubling of the number of vasectomies between 1980 and 1981.

One study conducted in 1977, when incentives were only equivalent to US$1.10 (at that time), indicated that between 40% and 60% of the men chose vasectomy because of the payment, who otherwise did not have any serious urge to get sterilized.

The "Bangladesh Association for Voluntary Sterilization", alone performed 67,000 tubal ligations and vasectomies in its 25 clinics in 1982. The rate of sterilization increased 25 percent each year.

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. About 3,000 women and men were planned to be sterilized on 16 December 1982 (the opening day). Ershad's government trained 1,200 doctors and 25,000 field workers who must conduct two tubal ligations and two vasectomies each month to earn their salaries. The government wanted to persuade 1.4 million people, both women and men to undergo sterilization within two years. One population control expert called it 'the largest sterilization program in the world'. By January 1983, 40,000 government field workers were employed in Bangladesh's 65,000 villages to persuade women and men to undergo sterilization and to promote usage of birth-control across the country.

Food subsidies under the group feeding program (VGF) were given to only those women with certificates showing that they had undergone tubal ligation.

There are reports that often when a woman had to undergo a gastrointestinal surgery, doctors took this opportunity to sterilize her without her knowledge. According to Bangladesh governmental website "National Emergency Service", the 2000 Bangladeshi Taka (US$24) and the sari/lungi given to the persons undergoing sterilizations are their "compensations". Where Bangladesh government also assures the poor people that it will cover all medical expenses if complications arise after the sterilization.

For the women who are persuaded to have IUD inserted into uterus, the government also offers 150 Bangladeshi Taka (US$1.80) after the procedure and 80+80+80=240 Bangladeshi Taka (0.96+0.96+0.96=2.88 USD) in three followups, where the referrer gets 50 Bangladeshi Taka (US$0.60). And for the women who are persuaded to have etonogestrel birth control implant placed under the skin in upper arm, the government offers 150 Bangladeshi Taka (US$1.80) after the procedure and 70+70+70=210 Bangladeshi Taka (0.84+0.84+0.84=2.52 USD) in three followups, where the referrer gets 60 Bangladeshi Taka (US$0.72).

Complications

In the 1977 study, a one-year follow-up of 585 men sterilized at vasectomy camps in Shibpur and Shalna in rural Bangladesh showed that almost half of the men were dissatisfied with their vasectomies.

58% of the men said their ability to work had decreased in the last year. 2–7% of the men said their sexual performance decreases. 30.6% of the Shibpur and 18.9% of the Shalna men experienced severe pain during the vasectomy. The men also said they had not received all of the incentives they had been promised.

According to another study on 5042 women and 264 men who underwent sterilization, complications such as painful urination, shaking chills, fever for at least two days, frequent urination, bleeding from the incision, sore with pus, stitches or skin breaking open, weakness and dizziness arose after the sterilization.

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. Five women died during the study, resulting in a death-to-case rate of 9.9/10,000 tubectomies (tubal ligations); four deaths were due to respiratory arrest caused by overuse of sedatives. The death-to-case rate of 9.9/10,000 tubectomies (tubal ligation) in this study is similar to the 10.0 deaths/10,000 cases estimated on the basis of a 1979 follow-up study in an Indian female sterilization camp. The presence of a complaint before the operation was generally a good predictor of postoperative complaints. Centers performing fewer than 200 procedures were associated with more complaints.

According to another study based on 20 sterilization-attributable deaths in Dacca (now Dhaka) and Rajshahi Divisions in Bangladesh, from 1 January 1979, to 31 March 1980, overall, the sterilization-attributable death-to-case rate was 21.3 deaths/100,000 sterilizations. The death rate for vasectomy was 1.6 times higher than that for tubal ligation. Anesthesia overdosage was the leading cause of death following tubal ligation along with tetanus (24%), where intraperitoneal hemorrhage (14%), and infection other than tetanus (5%) was other leading causes of death.

Two women (10%) died from pulmonary embolism after tubal ligation; one (5%) died from each of the following: anaphylaxis from anti-tetanus serum, heat stroke, small bowel obstruction, and aspiration of vomitus. All seven men died from scrotal infections after vasectomy.

According to a second epidemiologic investigation of deaths attributable to sterilization in Bangladesh, where all deaths resulting from sterilizations performed nationwide between 16 September 1980 and 15 April 1981, were investigated and analyzed, nineteen deaths from tubal ligation were attributed to 153,032 sterilizations (both tubal ligation and vasectomy), for an overall death-to-case rate of 12.4 deaths per 100,000 sterilizations. This rate was lower than that (21.3) for sterilizations performed in Dacca (now Dhaka) and Rajshahi Divisions from 1 January 1979 to 31 March 1980, although this difference was not statistically significant. Anesthesia overdosage, tetanus, and hemorrhage (bleeding) were the leading causes of death.

Backers

These civilian sterilization programs are funded by the countries from northern Europe and the United States. World bank is also known to have sponsored these civilian exploitative sterilization programs in Bangladesh. Historically, World Bank is known to have pressured 3rd World governments to implement population control programs.

Bangladesh has the highest population density in the world among the countries having at least 10 million people. The capital Dhaka is the 4th most densely populated city in the world, which ranked as the world's 2nd most unlivable city, just behind Damascus, Syria, according to the annual "Liveability Ranking" 2015 by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

Rohingya

Bangladesh is planning to introduce a sterilization program in its overcrowded Rohingya refugee camps, where nearly a million refugees are fighting for space, after efforts to encourage birth control failed. Since 25 August 2017, more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled from Rakhine state, Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh, which is a Muslim majority country, following a military crackdown against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine. Sabura, a Rohingya mother of seven, said her husband believed the couple could support a large family.

I spoke to my husband about birth control measures. But he is not convinced. He was given two condoms but he did not use them. My husband said we need more children as we have land and property (in Rakhine). We don't have to worry to feed them.

District family planning authorities have managed to distribute just 549 packets of condoms among the refugees, amid reports they are reluctant to use them. They have asked the government to approve a plan to provide vasectomies for men and tubectomies (tubal ligation) for women in the camps.

One volunteer, Farhana Sultana, said the women she spoke to believed birth control was a sin and others saw it as against the tenets of Islam.

Bangladeshi officials say about 20,000 Rohingya refugee women are pregnant and 600 have given birth since arriving in the country, but this may not be accurate as many births take place without formal medical help.

Every month 250 Bangladeshis undergo sterilization routinely under the government's sterilization program in the border district of Cox's Bazar, where the Rohingya refugee Muslims have taken shelter.

Brazil

During the 1970s–80s, the U.S. government sponsored family planning campaigns in Brazil, although sterilization was illegal at the time there. 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. 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.

An important case in the legal history of compulsory sterilization in Brazil is the 2018 São Paulo case. Prosecutors filed to have a mother of eight forcibly sterilized after she was arrested on charges of drug trafficking. This motion was justified by the mother's poverty, substance abuse disorder, and inability to care for her children, and the judge ruled in favor of sterilization. The surgery was carried out, reportedly against the woman's will. Legal experts discussing the case have stated the sterilization of a woman in Brazil is legal when determined absolutely necessary, but it is not clear what qualifies as necessary.

Canada

Compulsory sterilization in Canada of individuals deemed mentally unfit or "socially inadequate" was widespread in the early to mid-20th century. The belief was that by preventing these individuals from reproducing, society would be protected from the perceived negative impact of their genes. This led to compulsory sterilization of thousands of people, many of whom were Indigenous women, individuals with disabilities, and those deemed to have "undesirable" traits.

The legal basis for compulsory sterilization in Canada can be traced back to the passage of the Sexual Sterilization Act in Alberta in 1928. This legislation allowed for the sterilization of individuals deemed mentally deficient or mentally ill without their consent. Similar legislation existed in British Columbia, although records on sterilizations there are incomplete. Additionally, sterilizations occurred in Saskatchewan, Quebec, Manitoba, Ontario and other regions without specific legal frameworks. These laws remained in place until the 1970s, when public opinion began to shift and the practice was eventually deemed unethical and inhumane.

China

In 1978, Chinese authorities became concerned with the possibility of a baby boom that the country could not handle, and they initialized the one-child policy. In order to effectively deal with the complex issues surrounding childbirth, the Chinese government placed great emphasis on family planning. Because this was such an important matter, the government thought it needed to be standardized, and so to this end laws were introduced in 2002. These laws uphold the basic tenets of what was previously put into practice, outlining the rights of the individuals and outlining what the Chinese government can and cannot do to enforce policy.

However, accusations have been raised from groups such as Amnesty International, who have claimed that practices of compulsory sterilization have been occurring for people who have already reached their one child quota. These practices run contrary to the stated principles of the law, and seem to differ on a local level.

The Chinese government appears to be aware of these discrepancies in policy implementation on a local level. For example, The National Population and Family Planning Commission put forth in a statement that, "Some persons concerned in a few counties and townships of Linyi did commit practices that violated law and infringed upon legitimate rights and interests of citizens while conducting family planning work." This statement comes in reference to some charges of forced sterilization and abortions in Linyi city of Shandong Province.

The policy requires a "social compensation fee" for those who have more than the legal number of children. According to Forbes editor Heng Shao, critics claims this fee is a toll on the poor but not the rich. But after 2016, the country has allowed parents to give birth to two children. In 2017, the government offered to surgically remove the IUDs that had been implanted in women to force them to adhere to the one child policy, if they qualified to have a second child. The removal of these long used IUDs is a major surgery and many women are not informed of the risks that are associated with the surgery, such as bleeding, infection, and removal of the uterus.

Xinjiang

Beginning in 2019, reports of forced sterilization in Xinjiang began to surface. In 2020, public reporting continued to indicate that large-scale compulsory sterilization was being carried out. While national sterilization rates have fallen since the passing of the two child policy in 2016, there has been a sharp increase in the amount of sterilizations in Xinjiang. Many of these surgeries have been forced according to reports, but this is difficult to confirm due to the closed off nature of the area. These measures have sometimes been characterised as part of an ongoing Uyghur genocide in the province.

Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic

Czechoslovakia carried out a policy to sterilize some Romani women, starting in 1973. In some cases, the sterilization was in exchange for social welfare benefits, and the people who were affected were given written agreements which described what was to be done to them, but which they were unable to read due to their illiteracy. The dissidents of the Charter 77 movement denounced these practices in 1977–78 as a genocide, but this practice continued through the Velvet Revolution of 1989. 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).

Colombia

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. By 2005, Colombia had one of the world's highest contraceptive usage rates at 76.9%, with female sterilization being the highest percentage of use at just over 30% (second highest is the IUD at around 12% and the pill around 10%) (Measham and Lopez-Escobar 2007). In Colombia during the 1980s, sterilization was the second most popular choice of pregnancy prevention (after the Pill), and public healthcare organizations and funders (USAID, AVSC, IPPF) supported sterilization as a way to decrease abortions rates. While not directly forced into sterilization, women of lower socio-economic standing had significantly less options to afford family planning care as sterilizations were subsidized.

Denmark

11,000 people were sterilized in Denmark from 1929–67, about half were sterilized against their will. The forced sterilization program was "mainly was directed at people who were mentally handicapped" because of the popularity of eugenics at the time in Denmark. During the 1960s and 1970s, thousands of Greenlandic Inuit women and girls had IUDs placed without their consent. The birth rate in Greenland was reduced by around 50%. In 2022, Denmark and Greenland agreed to hold a two-year investigation into the program, known as the spiral case.

Until 11 June 2014, sterilization was requisite for legal sex change in Denmark.

Finland

Finland required forced sterilization for adults to legally change their sex, until 3 April 2023

Germany

One of the first acts by Adolf Hitler after the Reichstag Fire Decree and the Enabling Act of 1933 gave him de facto legal dictatorship over the German state was to pass the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring (Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses) in July 1933. The law was signed by Hitler himself, and over 200 eugenic courts were created specifically as a result of this law. Under it, all doctors in the Third Reich were required to report any patients of theirs who were deemed intellectually disabled, characterized mentally ill (including schizophrenia and manic depression), epileptic, blind, deaf, or physically deformed, and a steep monetary penalty was imposed for any patients who were not properly reported. Individuals with alcoholism or Huntington's disease could also be sterilized. The individual's case was then presented in front of a court of Nazi officials and public health officers who would review their medical records, take testimony from friends and colleagues, and eventually decide whether or not to order a sterilization operation performed upon the individual, using force if necessary. Though not explicitly covered by the law, 400 mixed-race "Rhineland Bastards" were also sterilized beginning in 1937. The sterilization program went on until the war started, with about 600,000 people sterilized.

By the end of World War II, over 400,000 individuals were sterilized under the German law and its revisions, most within its first four years of being enacted. When the issue of compulsory sterilization was brought-up at the Nuremberg trials after the war, many Nazis defended their actions on the matter by indicating that it was the United States itself from which they had taken inspiration. The Nazis had many other eugenics-inspired racial policies, including their T-4 euthanasia program, in which around 70,000 people who were institutionalized or had birth defects were killed.

Guatemala

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. In the 1980s, the archbishop of the country accused USAID of mass sterilizations of women without consent, but a President Reagan backed commission found the allegations to be false.

Iceland

Since 2019, nonconsensual sterilization is forbidden in Iceland unless deemed medically necessary. However, this law only addresses the procedures of tubal ligation and surgical blocking of the fallopian tubes, excluding hysterectomies from the ban. Iceland's laws surrounding legalization of sterilization practices also do not address consent of the disabled individuals undergoing these procedures. In March 2023, mother Hermina Hreidarsdottir authorized a hysterectomy for her severely cognitively impaired 20-year-old daughter due to her abnormal menstrual cycle. Ms. Hreidarsdottir took liberty of this decision for her daughter without consulting her because she believed that this sterilization procedure would improve her daughter's quality of life.

India

The Emergency in India from 1975 and 1977 resulted from internal and external conflict for the country, and resulted in misuse of power and human rights violations from the government. On 6 August 1976, the state of Maharashtra became the first governmental unit to enact legislation mandating compulsory sterilization of men and women after the birth of a third child, passing the Family (Restrictions on Size) Bill on its third reading and sending it to the President of India for the required assent. The President reacted favorably and sent the bill back to the Maharashtra government with suggested amendments that would be necessary for an enactment, but before the measure could be passed, new elections were called and the legislation was not passed.

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. This program focused on male citizens and used propaganda and monetary incentives to impoverished citizens to get sterilized. People who agreed to get sterilized would receive land, housing, and money or loans. This program led millions of men to receive vasectomies, and an undetermined amount of these were coerced. There were reports of officials blocking off villages and dragging men to surgical centers for vasectomies. However, after much protest and opposition, the country switched to targeting women through coercion, withholding welfare or ration card benefits, and bribing women with food and money. This switch was theorized to be based on the principle women are less likely to protest for their own rights. Many deaths occurred as a result of both the male and the female sterilization programs. These deaths were likely attributed to poor sanitation standards and quality standards in the Indian sterilization camps.

Sanjay Gandhi, son of the then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, was largely responsible for what turned out to be a failed program. A strong mistrust against family planning initiatives followed the highly controversial program, the effect of which continues into the 21st century. Sterilization policies are still enforced in India, targeting mostly indigenous and lower-class women who are herded into the sterilization camps. The most recent abuse of family planning systems was highlighted by the death of 15 lower-class women in a sterilization center in Chhattisgarh in 2014. Despite these deaths, sterilization is still the highest used method of birth control with 39% of women in India turning to sterilization in 2015.

According to Human Rights Law Network:

In September 2016, the Supreme Court of India directed the Union Government to ensure the discontinuation of 'sterilization camps' within the following three years and to induce the state governments to follow suit. It also charged the government to ensure proper monitoring of the programme, investigate sterilization failures, complications or deaths, and increase the compensation amount in these cases. 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. Often the women were made to wait up to five hours after registering, and by the time they reached the operating table their an aesthetic would have worn off. 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). The doctor in Bhubaneshwar stated that he had done over 60,000 tubectomies and many of them with bicycle pumps. In Kaparfora, Bihar, a woman was operated upon, even though she was pregnant, and suffered a miscarriage as a result. Today, while laws may not announce eugenic aims, hidden agenda to dispose of "undesirables" in society can still be discovered by looking beyond the face of the law. 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. For example, compulsory sterilization law laws often target LGBT+ people, especially transgender people.

Forced sterilization has been an issue that has also affected the disabled population of women in India. In 2016, the Right to Persons with Disabilities Act (RPWD) was introduced to legally address the problems faced by the disabled community and ensure equitable access to justice for all members of society:

"While the RPWD Act took a step towards recognizing the issue of forced abortions under Section 92(f) which states that any medical procedure performed on a disabled woman without her express consent that leads to the termination of pregnancy is punishable with an imprisonment term, there is still no specific mention of forced sterilization as a problem."

There is no clause in the RPWD that addresses the notion of "expressed consent." Consent in relation to family planning and sterilization practices has been a point of contention in India's history of reproductive justice of disabled individuals.

Israel

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. In 2009, feminist NGO Haifa Women's Coalition published a first survey on the story, which was followed up by Israeli Educational Television a few years later. Ethiopian-Jewish women said they were intimidated or tricked into taking the shot every three months.

Japan

In the first part of the reign of Emperor Hirohito, Japanese governments promoted increasing the number of healthy Japanese, while simultaneously decreasing the number of people who were afflicted with mental retardation, disability, genetic disease, and other conditions that led to inferiority in the Japanese genepool.

The Leprosy Prevention laws of 1907, 1931, and 1953 permitted the segregation of patients in sanitariums where forced abortions and sterilization were common, and authorized punishment of patients "disturbing peace". Under the colonial Korean Leprosy prevention ordinance, Korean patients were also subjected to hard labor.

The "National Eugenic Law" was promulgated in 1940 by the Konoe government, after rejection of the original "Race Eugenic Protection Law" in 1938. From 1940 to 1945, sterilization was done to 454 Japanese persons under this law. Appx. 25,000 people, including 8,500 under (forced or spontaneous) consent, were surgically processed until 1995.

According to the Eugenic Protection Law (1948), sterilization could be enforced upon criminals "with genetic predisposition to commit crime", patients with genetic diseases including mild ones such as total color-blindness, hemophilia, albinism, ichthyosis, and mental affections such as schizophrenia, manic-depression possibly deemed occurrent in their opposition and epilepsy. The mental sicknesses were added in 1952.

In early 2019, Japan's supreme court upheld a requirement that transgender people must have their reproductive organs removed.

In March 2019, Japan's legal policy about transgender people was:

In Japan, transgender people who want to legally change their gender must appeal to a family court under the GID Act, which was introduced in 2004. The procedure is discriminatory, requiring applicants to be single and without children under age 20, to undergo a psychiatric evaluation to receive a diagnosis of "gender identity disorder," and to be sterilized.The requirements rest on an outdated and pejorative notion that a transgender identity is a mental health condition, and compel transgender people to undergo lengthy, expensive, invasive, and irreversible medical procedures.

The last stipulation of the GID Act concerning forced sterilization was recently overturned in October 2023. Japan’s supreme court ruled that requiring transgender people to undergo sterilization so that they can legally change their gender identity is unconstitutional. 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". The court did not address the other requirement under the GID Act, which outlines that transgender people must undergo transition surgery in order to legally register as the gender with which they identify.

In July 2024, the Supreme Court of Japan ruled that the Eugenic Protection Law passed in 1948 was unconstitutional, and eliminated the 20-year statute of limitations for those affected by the law.

Kenya

In Kenya, HIV was considered an ongoing issue, and the governor believed that compulsory sterilization of women infected with HIV could stop the spread of the virus. In 2012, a report titled "Robbed of Choice" sparked outrage. The report outlined the experiences of 40 women infected with HIV that had been sterilized against their will. 5 of the 40 women filed a lawsuit against the government of Kenya, claiming violations of their Health and Human Rights. The majority of the women who were sterilized knew nothing about the procedure or its consequences, which was one reason they did not push the issue. The President thought it would be good to keep a list of women who had been infected with HIV, but by naming these women, many of them did not to want to receive medical treatment due to the shame associated with the virus. "The authors concluded that punitive and restrictive laws related to pregnancy have numerous adverse consequences—both health-related and socioeconomic—for women, and urged human rights groups to work with government institutions to protect and fulfill women's fundamental reproductive rights."

Nigeria

Laws in Ghana, Nigeria, and Tanzania involve references to medical operations where the intended benefit for the patient is not tied to any legal consequences for medical professionals involved. Specifically, the criminal Code of Nigeria States that: “Performing with good faith and with reasonable care and skill a surgical operation upon any person for his benefit, if the performance of the operation is reasonable, having regard to the patient’s state and to all the circumstances of the case.”

In Nigeria, young girls with intellectual disabilities are susceptible to non consensual sterilization. No current laws explicitly prevent involuntary sterilization. And the laws that currently surround and may apply to the issue are not helpful in preventing it. The African Commission on Human and People’s Rights declared that involuntary sterilization violates the right to “equality and non-discrimination, dignity, liberty and security of the person.”

Involuntary sterilization in Nigeria is more common for girls with intellectual disabilities than for boys with intellectual disabilities and more common for those with intellectual disabilities specifically in comparison to other disabilities. Involuntary sterilization commonly occurs when relatives initiate it. In several studies involving parents of girls with disabilities who had initiated involuntary sterilization, respondents said that the primary reason for sterilization was to prevent pregnancy either for financial reasons or due to risk of offspring with intellectual disabilities. However, similar motivations for sterilization were not common for girls without intellectual disabilities. There is also a gendered element sterilization as the Nigeria law code penalizes emasculation, which makes it so that men cannot reproduce. There is no such penalization for sterilization of women.

Mexico

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. Although there is enough evidence regarding the effectiveness of interventions aimed to reduce mother-to-child transmission risks, there are records of HIV-positive women forced to undergo sterilization or have agreed to be sterilized without adequate and sufficient information about their options."

A report made in El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, and Nicaragua concluded that women living with HIV, and whose health providers knew about it at the time of pregnancy, were six times more likely to experience forced or coerced sterilization in those countries. In addition, most of these women reported that health providers told them that living with HIV cancelled their right to choose the number and spacing of the children they want to have as well as the right to choose the contraceptive method of their choice; provided misleading information about the consequences for their health and that of their children and denied them access to treatments that reduce mother-to-child HIV transmission in order to coerce them into sterilization.

This happens even when the health norm NOM 005-SSA2-1993 Archived 31 August 2009 at the Wayback Machine states that family planning is "the right of everyone to decide freely, responsibly and in an informed way the number and spacing of their children and to obtain specialized information and proper services" and that "the exercise of this right is independent of gender, age, and social or legal status of persons".

Peru

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. 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. The plan was principally financed using funds from USAID (36 million dollars), the Nippon Foundation, and later, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). On 9 September 1995, Fujimori presented a Bill that would revise the "General Law of Population", in order to allow sterilization. Several contraceptive methods were also legalized, all measures that were strongly opposed by the Roman Catholic Church, as well as the Catholic organization Opus Dei. In February 1996, the World Health Organization (WHO) itself congratulated Fujimori on his success in controlling demographic growth.

On 25 February 1998, a representative for USAID testified before the U.S. government's House Committee on International Relations, to address controversy surrounding Peru's program. He indicated that the government of Peru was making important changes to the program, in order to:

• Discontinue their campaigns in tubal ligations and vasectomies.
• Make clear to health workers that there are no provider targets for voluntary surgical contraception or any other method of contraception.
• Implement a comprehensive monitoring program to ensure compliance with family planning norms and informed consent procedures.
• Welcome Ombudsman Office investigations of complaints received and respond to any additional complaints that are submitted as a result of the public request for any additional concerns.
• Implement a 72-hour "waiting period" for people who choose tubal ligation or vasectomy. This waiting period will occur between the second counseling session and surgery.
• Require health facilities to be certified as appropriate for performing surgical contraception as a means to ensure that no operations are done in makeshift or substandard facilities.

In September 2001, Minister of Health Luis Solari launched a special commission into the activities of the voluntary surgical contraception, initiating a parliamentary commission tasked with inquiring into the "irregularities" of the program, and to put it on an acceptable footing. In July 2002, its final report ordered by the Minister of Health revealed that between 1995 and 2000, 331,600 women were sterilized, while 25,590 men submitted to vasectomies. The plan, which had the objective of diminishing the number of births in areas of poverty within Peru, was essentially directed at the indigenous people living in deprived areas (areas often involved in internal conflicts with the Peruvian government, as with the Shining Path guerilla group). Deputy Dora Núñez Dávila made the accusation in September 2003 that 400,000 indigenous people were sterilized during the 1990s. 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). A study by sociologist Giulia Tamayo León [es], Nada Personal (in English: Nothing Personal), showed that doctors were required to meet quotas. According to Le Monde diplomatique, "tubal ligation festivals" were organized through program publicity campaigns, held in the pueblos jóvenes (in English: shantytowns). In 1996 there were, according to official statistics, 81,762 tubal ligations performed on women, with a peak being reached the following year, with 109,689 ligatures, then only 25,995 in 1998.

On 21 October 2011, Peru's Attorney General José Bardales decided to reopen an investigation into the cases, which had been halted in 2009 under the statute of limitations, after the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights ruled that President Fujimori's sterilization program involved crimes against humanity, which are not time-limited. It is unclear as to any progress in matter of the execution (debido ejecución sumaria) of the suspect in the course of any proof of their relevant accusations in the legal sphere of the constituted people in vindication of the rights of the people of South America. It may carry a parallel to any suspect cases for international investigation in any other continent, and be in the sphere of medical genocide. As of 12 December 2021:

A Peruvian judge ruled last week that the 83-year-old could not be brought to court because of the forced sterilization, as the allegation was not included in an old extradition request for Fujimori. The ex-president was extradited from Chile to Peru in 2007. According to the judge, Chile's Supreme Court, which gave the go-ahead for extradition at the time, must agree to Fujimori's charge of forced sterilization.

Russia

Since children cannot legally live in psychoneurologic internats in Russia, and there are no institutions where internats' patients can live with their children, almost all pregnant women are aborted in PNIs. During abortions, PNI patients are also often subjected to forced sterilization - their fallopian tubes are tied, motivated by allegedly detected "serious complications".

South Africa

In South Africa, there have been multiple reports of HIV-positive women sterilized without their informed consent and sometimes without their knowledge. The Commission for Gender Equality investigated 48 sterilizations that were performed in fifteen state hospitals without patient consent from 2002 to 2005. This investigation into these hospitals revealed that medical providers threatened to not assist women during birth if they did not sign consent forms to being sterilized. In most cases these forms were not explained to patients by medical personnel. However, the inquiry was hampered by hostile hospital staff and the sudden "disappearance" of patient files. An interview with one of these patients revealed that she did not learn that she had been sterilized during her C-section until a physician told her eleven years after that she had no uterus. She went to the hospital were the surgery was performed and was told by a physician that it was done to save her life and consent was received from her mother. The patient did not have HIV or any other life-threatening condition, and her mother had not consented to the removal of her uterus. The report from the Commission for Gender Equality noted that some of the patients interviewed were given consent forms that they did not understand and were coerced to sign. The bulk of these operations were performed to prevent women who are HIV-positive from having more children. The HIV epidemic in South Africa has a prevalence of 13% and has largely affected the family structures in the country. Medical staff of these hospitals have justified their actions as an effort to stop the growing HIV numbers in the country that exhaust the healthcare systems. The Commission urged Health Minister Zweli Mkhize to take action against these state hospitals and to provide some form of redress to the many affected women.

Sweden

The eugenics program in Sweden was enacted in 1934 and was formally abolished in 1976. According to the 2000 governmental report, 21,000 were estimated to have been forcibly sterilized, 6,000 were coerced into a 'voluntary' sterilization while the nature of a further 4,000 cases could not be determined. Of those sterilized 93% were women. The reasons given for these sterilizations included mental slowness, racial differences, antisocial behavior, promiscuous behavior, and other behaviors deemed inappropriate. At the time, the government saw itself as a forward-thinking and enlightened welfare state. The Swedish state subsequently formed a commission of inquiry to determine victims that could claim compensation for trauma at the hands of the state. The sterilization program ended in the government paying over $22,000 in compensation to victims.

Until December 2012, Swedish law forced transgender individuals to be sterilized before having their legal documents updated. After the law was repealed, those who were forcibly sterilized under the law began to demand compensation. In 2017, the government announced that it will pay these compensations.

United Kingdom

In 1911, while he was serving as Home Secretary, Winston Churchill favored the sterilization of feeble-minded persons. Reginald McKenna, who succeeded Churchill as Home Secretary, introduced the Feeble-Minded Control Bill, a bill that would enact forcible sterilization of such individuals; the bill gained the support of the Anglican archbishops of Canterbury and York, that included forced sterilization. Despite support for the bill by the Anglican primates, English writer G. K. Chesterton and the Catholic Church in the United Kingdom led a successful effort to defeat that clause's inclusion in what would eventually become the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act, though the final act did create a scheme for state-enforced confinement of mentally disabled persons in specialized institutions. In 1934, the Brock Report recommended sterilisation of people who were mentally and physically disabled, but its proposals did not gain enough support to be made law.

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.

United States

During the Progressive Era (c. 1890 to 1920), the United States was the first country to concertedly undertake compulsory sterilization programs for the purpose of eugenics. 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 heads of the programs were avid proponents of eugenics and frequently argued for their programs which achieved some success nationwide mainly in the first half of the 20th century.

Eugenics had two essential components. First, its advocates accepted as axiomatic that a range of mental and physical handicaps—blindness, deafness, and many forms of mental illness—were largely, if not entirely, hereditary in cause. Second, they assumed that these scientific hypotheses could be used as the basis of social engineering across several policy areas, including family planning, education, and immigration. The most direct policy implications of eugenic thought were that "mental defectives" should not produce children, since they would only replicate these deficiencies, and that such individuals from other countries should be kept out of the polity. The principal targets of the American sterilization programs were intellectually disabled people and the mentally ill, but also targeted under many state laws were the deaf, the blind, people with epilepsy, and the physically deformed. While the claim was that the focus was mainly the mentally ill and disabled, the definition of this during that time was much different from today's. At this time, there were many women that were sent to institutions under the guise of being "feeble-minded" because they were promiscuous or became pregnant while unmarried.

A relative minority of sterilizations targeting crime took place in prisons and other penal institutions. In the end, over 65,000 individuals were sterilized in 33 states under state compulsory sterilization programs in the United States.

The first state to introduce a compulsory sterilization bill was Michigan, in 1897, but the proposed law failed to pass. Eight years later Pennsylvania's state legislators passed a sterilization bill that was vetoed by the governor. Indiana became the first state to enact sterilization legislation in 1907, followed closely by California and Washington in 1909. Several other states followed, but such legislation remained controversial enough to be defeated in some cases, as in Wyoming in 1934. In the 1920s, Eugenicists were particularly interested in black women in the South and Latina women in the Southwest in order to break the chain of welfare dependency and curb the population rise of non-white citizens.

After World War II, public opinion towards eugenics and sterilization programs became more negative in the light of the connection with the genocidal policies of Nazi Germany, though a significant number of sterilizations continued in a few states through the 1970s. Between 1970 and 1976, Indian Health Services sterilized between 25 and 42 percent of women of reproductive age who came in seeking healthcare services. In California, ten women who delivered their children at LAC-USC hospital between 1971-1974 and were sterilized without proper consent sued the hospital in the landmark Madrigal v. Quilligan case in 1975. The plaintiffs lost the case, but numerous changes to the consent process were made following the ruling, such as offering consent forms in the patient's native language, and a 72-hour waiting period between giving consent and undergoing the procedure.

The Oregon Board of Eugenics, later renamed the Board of Social Protection, existed until 1983, with the last forcible sterilization occurring in 1981. The U.S. commonwealth of Puerto Rico had a sterilization program as well. Some states continued to have sterilization laws on the books for much longer after that, though they were rarely if ever used. California sterilized more than any other state by a wide margin, and was responsible for over a third of all sterilization operations. Information about the California sterilization program was produced into book form and widely disseminated by eugenicists E. S. Gosney and Paul Popenoe, which was said by the government of Adolf Hitler to be of key importance in proving that large-scale compulsory sterilization programs were feasible.

In recent years, the governors of many states have made public apologies for their past programs beginning with Virginia and followed by Oregon and California. Few have offered to compensate those sterilized, however, citing that few are likely still living (and would of course have no affected offspring) and that inadequate records remain by which to verify them. At least one compensation case, Poe v. Lynchburg Training School & Hospital (1981), was filed in the courts on the grounds that the sterilization law was unconstitutional. It was rejected because the law was no longer in effect at the time of the filing. However, the petitioners were granted some compensation because the stipulations of the law itself, which required informing the patients about their operations, had not been carried out in many cases. The 27 states where sterilization laws remained on the books (though not all were still in use) in 1956 were: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin. Some states still have forced sterilization laws in effect, such as Washington state.

As of January 2011, discussions were under way regarding compensation for the victims of forced sterilization under the authorization of the Eugenics Board of North Carolina. Governor Bev Perdue formed the NC Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation in 2010 in order "to provide justice and compensate victims who were forcibly sterilized by the State of North Carolina". In 2013 North Carolina announced that it would spend $10 million beginning in June 2015 to compensate men and women who were sterilized in the state's eugenics program; North Carolina sterilized 7,600 people from 1929 to 1974 who were deemed socially or mentally unfit.

The inability to pay for the cost of raising children has been a reason courts have ordered coercive or compulsory sterilization. In June 2014, a Virginia judge ruled that a man on probation for child endangerment must be able to pay for his seven children before having more children; the man agreed to get a vasectomy as part of his plea deal. In 2013, an Ohio judge ordered a man owing nearly $100,000 in unpaid child support to "make all reasonable efforts to avoid impregnating a woman" as a condition of his probation. Kevin Maillard wrote that conditioning the right to reproduction on meeting child support obligations amounts to "constructive sterilization" for men unlikely to make the payments.

As of 19 July 2021 it was reported that:

"under new provisions signed into California's budget this week, the state will offer reparations for the thousands of people who were sterilized in California institutions, without adequate consent, often because they were deemed "criminal", "feeble-minded" or "deviant"."

and that

"The program will be the first in the nation to provide compensation to modern-day survivors of prison system sterilizations, like Dillon, whose attorney obtained medical records to show that, while she was an inmate in the Central California women's facility in Chowchilla, surgeons had removed her ovaries during what was supposed to be an operation to take a biopsy and remove a cyst.

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.

The new California reparations program will also seek to compensate hundreds of living survivors of the state's earlier eugenics campaign, which was first codified into state law in 1909 and wasn't repealed until 1979."

Georgia immigration detention center 2020

In 2020, four non-profit organizations (which are listed below) joined Dawn Wooten to accuse a privately-owned U.S. immigration detention center in the U.S. state of Georgia of forcibly sterilizing women. The reports claimed that a doctor conducted unauthorized medical procedures upon women who were detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Dawn Wooten was a nurse and former employee. She claims that a high rate of sterilizations were performed upon spanish-speaking women and women who spoke various indigenous languages that are common in Latin America. Wooten said that the center did not obtain proper consent for these surgeries, or lied to women about the medical procedures. More than 40 women submitted testimony in writing to document these abuses.

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. The ministry said that consulate personnel had interviewed 18 Mexican women who were detained at the center, none of which "claimed to have undergone a hysterectomy". Another woman said that she had undergone a gynecological operation, although there was nothing in her detention file to support that she agreed to the procedure.

The nurse said that detained women told her they did not fully understand why they had to get a hysterectomy.

Project South, the Georgia Detention Watch, the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, and South Georgia Immigrant Support Network filed a complaint to the government on behalf of detained immigrants and the nurse.

The U.S. congresswoman Pramila Jayapal has called for an urgent investigation into allegations that at least 17 women were subjected to unnecessary gynecological procedures that she called "the most abhorrent of human rights violations".

Effect on disabled persons

As stated previously, eugenics in the United States spread to target mentally disabled persons. Sterilization rates across the country were relatively low, with the sole exception of California, until the 1927 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Buck v. Bell, which upheld under the U.S. Constitution the forced sterilization of patients at a Virginia home for intellectually disabled people. In the wake of that decision, over 62,000 people in the United States, most of them women, were sterilized. The number of sterilizations performed per year increased until another Supreme Court case, Skinner v. Oklahoma, 1942, complicated the legal situation by ruling against sterilization of criminals if the equal protection clause of the constitution was violated. That is, if sterilization was to be performed, then it could not exempt white-collar criminals. This case, however, does not directly overturn the decision made in Buck v. Bell. Instead, it invalidates the central argument of the decision, and has been used in several cases to deny guardians the right to sterilize the disabled person under their care.

The Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) believes that mental disability is not a reason to deny sterilization. The opinion of ACOG is that "the physician must consult with the patient's family, agents, and other caregivers" if sterilization is desired for a mentally limited patient. In 2003, Douglas Diekema wrote in Volume 9 of the journal Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Reviews that "involuntary sterilization ought not be performed on mentally retarded persons who retain the capacity for reproductive decision-making, the ability to raise a child, or the capacity to provide valid consent to marriage." The Journal of Medical Ethics claimed, in a 1999 article, that doctors are regularly confronted with requests to sterilize mentally limited people who cannot give consent for themselves. The article recommend that sterilization should only occur when there is a "situation of necessity" and the "benefits of sterilization outweigh the drawbacks."

The American Journal of Bioethics published an article, in 2010, that concluded the interventions used in the Ashley treatment may benefit future patients. These interventions, at the request of the parents and guidance from the physicians, included a hysterectomy and surgical removal of the breast buds of the mentally and physically disabled child. Proponents of the treatments argue that it protects disabled persons from sexual assault, unwanted pregnancy, and difficulties of menstruation. The interventions are still legal in many states, despite the argument that it violates a person's constitutional right to avoid unwanted intrusions. Discussion on the involuntary sterilization of disabled persons is now largely focused on the right of a guardian to request sterilization.

Criminal justice system

In addition to eugenics purposes, sterilization was used as a punitive measure against sex offenders, people identified as homosexual, or people deemed to masturbate too much. California, the first state in the U.S. to enact compulsory sterilization based on eugenics, sterilized all prison inmates under the 1909 sterilization law. In the last 40 years, judges have offered lighter punishment (i.e. probation instead of jail sentences) to people willing to use contraception or be sterilized, particularly in child abuse/endangerment cases. One of the most famous cases of this was People v. Darlene Johnson, during which Johnson, a woman charged with child abuse sentenced to seven years in prison, was offered probation and a reduced prison sentence if she agreed to use Norplant.

In addition to child abuse cases, some politicians proposed bills mandating Norplant use among women on public assistance as a requirement to maintain welfare benefits. As noted above, some judges offered probation in lieu of prison time to women who agreed to use Norplant, while other court cases have ordered parents to cease childbearing until regaining custody of their children after abuse cases. Some legal scholars and ethicists argue such practices are inherently coercive. Furthermore, such scholars link these practices to eugenic policies of the 19th and early 20th century, highlighting how such practices not only targeted poor people, but disproportionately impacted minority women and families in the U.S., particularly black women.

In the late 1970s, to acknowledge the history of forced and coercive sterilizations and prevent ongoing eugenics/population control efforts, the federal government implemented a standardized informed consent process and specific eligibility criteria for government funded sterilization procedures. 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.

Though formal eugenics laws are no longer routinely implemented and have been removed from government documents, instances of reproductive coercion still take place in U.S. institutions today. In 2011, investigative news released a report revealing that between 2006 and 2011, 148 female prisoners in two California state prisons were sterilized without adequate informed consent. In September 2014, California enacted Bill SB 1135 that bans sterilization in correctional facilities, unless the procedure shall be required in a medical emergency to preserve an inmate's life.

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rican physician Lanauze Rolón founded the League for Birth Control in Ponce, Puerto Rico, in 1925, but the League was quickly squashed by opposition from the Catholic church. A similar League was founded seven years later, in 1932, in San Juan and continued in operation for two years before opposition and lack of support forced its closure. Yet another effort at establishing birth control clinics was made in 1934 by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration in a relief response to the conditions of the Great Depression. As a part of this effort, 68 birth control clinics were opened on the island. The next mass opening of clinics occurred in January 1937 when American Clarence Gamble, in association with a group of wealthy and influential Puerto Ricans, organized the Maternal and Infant Health Association and opened 22 birth control clinics.

The Governor of Puerto Rico, Blanton Winship, enacted Law 116, which went into effect on 13 May 1937. It was a birth control and eugenic sterilization law that allowed the dissemination of information regarding birth control methods and legalized the practice of birth control. The government cited a growing population of the poor and unemployed as motivators for the law. Changers were made to the Penal Code in 1937 which made abortion effectively legal. It was allowed for health reasons, without specifying details in the law. This gave doctors discretion to interpret what constituted a health reason, effectively legalizing abortion. By 1965, approximately 34 percent of women of childbearing age had been sterilized, two thirds of whom were still in their early twenties. The law was repealed on 8 June 1960.

1940s–1950s

Unemployment and widespread poverty would continue to grow in Puerto Rico in the 40s, both threatening U.S. private investment in Puerto Rico and acting as a deterrent for future investment. In an attempt to attract additional U.S. private investment in Puerto Rico, another round of liberalizing trade policies were implemented and referred to as "Operation Bootstrap." Despite these policies and their relative success, unemployment and poverty in Puerto Rico remained high, high enough to prompt an increase in emigration from Puerto Rico to the United States between 1950 and 1955. The issues of immigration, Puerto Rican poverty, and threats to U.S. private investment made population control concerns a prime political and social issue for the United States.

The 50s also saw the production of social science research supporting sterilization procedures in Puerto Rico. Princeton's Office of Population Research, in collaboration with the Social Research Department at the University of Puerto Rico, conducted interviews with couples regarding sterilization and other birth control. Their studies concluded that there was a significant need and desire for permanent birth control among Puerto Ricans. In response, Puerto Rico's governor and Commissioner of health opened 160 private, temporary birth control clinics with the specific purpose of sterilization.

Also during this era, private birth control clinics were established in Puerto Rico with funds provided by wealthy Americans. Joseph Sunnen, a wealthy American Republican and industrialist, established the Sunnen Foundation in 1957. The foundation funded new birth control clinics under the title "La Asociación Puertorriqueña el Biensestar de la Familia" and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in an experimental project to determine if a formulaic program could be used to control population growth in Puerto Rico and beyond.

Sterilization procedures and coercion

From beginning of the 1900s, U.S. and Puerto Rican governments espoused rhetoric connecting the poverty of Puerto Rico with overpopulation and the "hyper-fertility" of Puerto Ricans. 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. A Puerto Rican Eugenics Board, modeled after a similar board in the United States, was created as part of the bill, and officially ordered ninety-seven involuntary sterilizations.

The legalization of sterilization was followed by a steady increase in the popularity of the procedure, both among the Puerto Rican population and among physicians working in Puerto Rico. Though sterilization could be performed on men and women, women were most likely to undergo the procedure. Sterilization was most frequently recommended by physicians because of a pervasive belief that Puerto Ricans and the poor were not intelligent enough to use other forms of contraception. Physicians and hospitals alike also implemented hospital policy to encourage sterilization, with some hospitals refusing to admit healthy pregnant women for delivery unless they consented to be sterilized. This has been best documented at Presbyterian Hospital, where the unofficial policy for a time was to refuse admittance for delivery to women who already had three living children unless she consented to sterilization. There is additional evidence that true informed consent was not obtained from patients before they underwent sterilization, if consent was solicited at all.

By 1949 a survey of Puerto Rican women found that 21% of women interviewed had been sterilized, with sterilizations being performed in 18% of all hospital births statewide as a routine post-partum procedure, with the sterilization operation performed before women left the hospitals after giving birth. As for the birth control clinics founded by Sunnen, the Puerto Rican Family Planning Association reported that around 8,000 women and 3,000 men had been sterilized in Sunnen's privately funded clinics. At one point, the levels of sterilization in Puerto Rico were so high that they alarmed the Joint Committee for Hospital Accreditation, who then demanded that Puerto Rican hospitals limit sterilizations to ten percent of all hospital deliveries in order to receive accreditation. The high popularity of sterilization continued into the 60s and 70s, during which the Puerto Rican government made the procedures available for free and reduced fees. The effects of the sterilization and contraception campaigns of the 1900s in Puerto Rico are still felt in Puerto Rican cultural history today.

Controversy and opposing opinions

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.

Some scholars, such as Bonnie Mass and Iris Lopez, have argued that the history and popularity of mass-sterilization in Puerto Rico represents a government-led eugenics initiative for population control. They cite the private and government funding of sterilization, coercive practices, and the eugenics ideology of Puerto Rican and American governments and physicians as evidence of a mass-sterilization campaign.

On the other side of the debate, scholars like Laura Briggs have argued that evidence does not substantiate claims of a mass-sterilization program. She further argues that reducing the popularity of sterilization in Puerto Rico to a state initiative ignores the legacy of Puerto Rican feminist activism in favor or birth control legalization, and the individual agency of Puerto Rican women in making decisions about family planning.

A system was proposed by the California state senator Nancy Skinner to compensate victims of the well-documented examples of prison sterilizations that resulted from California's eugenics programs, but this did not pass by the bill's 2018 deadline in the legislature.

Effects

When the United States took census of Puerto Rico in 1899, the birth rate was 40 births per one thousand people. By 1961, the birth rate had dropped to 30.8 per thousand. In 1955, 16.5% of Puerto Rican women of childbearing age had been sterilized, this jumped to 34% in 1965.

In 1969, sociologist Harriet Presser analyzed the 1965 Master Sample Survey of Health and Welfare in Puerto Rico. She specifically analyzed data from the survey for women ages 20 to 49 who had at least one birth, resulting in an overall sample size of 1,071 women. She found that over 34% of women aged 20–49 had been sterilized in Puerto Rico in 1965.

Presser's analysis also found that 46.7% of women who reported they were sterilized were between the ages of 34 and 39. Of the sample of women sterilized, 46.6% had been married 15 to 19 years, 43.9% had been married for 10-to-14 years, and 42.7% had been married for 20-to-24 years. Nearly 50% of women sterilized had three or four births. Over 1/3 of women who reported being sterilized were sterilized in their twenties, with the average age of sterilization being 26.

A survey by a team of Americans in 1975 confirmed Presser's assessment that nearly 1/3 of Puerto Rican women of childbearing age had been sterilized. As of 1977, Puerto Rico had the highest proportion of childbearing-aged persons sterilized in the world. In 1993, ethnographic work done in New York by anthropologist Iris Lopez showed that the history of sterilization continued to effect the lives of Puerto Rican women even after they immigrated to the United States and lived there for generations. The history of the popularity of sterilization in Puerto Rico meant that Puerto Rican women living in America had high rates of female family members who had undergone sterilization, and it remained a highly popular form of birth control among Puerto Rican women living in New York.

Uzbekistan

According to reports, as of 2012, forced and coerced sterilization is the current governmental policy in Uzbekistan for women with two or three children, as a means of forcing population control and to improve maternal mortality rates. In November 2007, a report by the United Nations Committee Against Torture reported that "the large number of cases of forced sterilization and removal of reproductive organs of women at reproductive age after their first or second pregnancy indicate that the Uzbek government is trying to control the birth rate in the country" and noted that such actions were not against the national Criminal Code. In response to that, the Uzbek delegation to the associated conference was "puzzled by the suggestion of forced sterilization, and could not see how this could be enforced".

Reports of forced sterilizations, hysterectomies, and IUD-insertions first emerged in 2005, although it is reported that the practice originated in the late 1990s, with reports of a secret decree dating from 2000. 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", and which came into force in 2009. In 2005, Deputy Health Minister Assomidin Ismoilov confirmed that doctors in Uzbekistan were being held responsible for increased birth rates.

Based upon a report by the journalist Natalia Antelava, doctors reported that the Ministry of Health told doctors that they must perform surgical sterilizations upon women. One doctor reported: "It's ruling number 1098, and it says that after two children, in some areas after three, a woman should be sterilized.", in a loss of the former surface decency of Central Asian mores in regard of female chastity. In 2010, the Ministry of Health passed a decree stating all clinics in Uzbekistan should have sterilization equipment ready for use. The same report also states that sterilization is to be done on a voluntary basis with the informed consent of the patient. In the 2010 Human Rights Report of Uzbekistan, there were many reports of forced sterilization of women along with allegations of the government pressuring doctors to sterilize women in order to control the population. Doctors also reported to Antelava that there are quotas they must reach every month on how many women they need to sterilize. These orders are passed on to them through their bosses and, allegedly, from the government.

On 15 May 2012, during a meeting with the Russian president Vladimir Putin in Moscow, the Uzbek president Islam Karimov said: "we are doing everything in our hands to make sure that the population growth rate does not exceed 1.2–1.3" The Uzbek version of RFE/RL reported that, with this statement, Karimov indirectly admitted that forced sterilization of women is indeed taking place in Uzbekistan. The main Uzbek television channel, called O'zbekiston, cut-out Karimov's statement about the population growth rate while broadcasting his conversation with Putin.

Despite international agreement concerning the inhumanity and illegality of forced sterilization, it has been suggested that the government of Uzbekistan continues to pursue such programs.

Other countries

Eugenics programs including forced sterilization existed in most of the Northern European countries, as well as in other more-or-less Protestant countries. Other countries that had notably active sterilization programs include Denmark ("that country's forced sterilization of 60,000 people in 1935-76"), Norway, Finland("In Finland, to change one's gender markers in the juridical system (also known as gender recognition), trans people are, still, forcibly sterilised. 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'"), Estonia, Switzerland, Iceland, and some countries in Latin America (including Panama).

See also

Genocide portal

• Medical industrial complex
• Outline of genocide studies
• Anti-natalism
• Birth control
• Chemical castration
• Christian views on contraception
• Eugenics
  • Eugenics in the United States
  • History of eugenics
  • New eugenics
• Forced pregnancy
• Germany Must Perish!
• Human overpopulation
• La Operación
• Legal status of human sterilization by country
• Reproductive rights
• Wrongful life
• Voluntary Human Extinction Movement
• Yogyakarta Principles

References

1. Webster University, Forced Sterilization. Retrieved on 30 August 2014. "Women and Global Human Rights". Archived from the original on 7 September 2015. Retrieved 29 October 2016.
2. Correa, Sonia (1994). Population and Reproductive Rights: Feminists Perspectives from the South. London: Zed Books Ltd. p. 11. ISBN 978-1856492843.
3. ^ Solinger, Rickie (2005). Pregnancy and Power: A Short History of Reproductive Politics in America. New York: New York University Press. p. 90. ISBN 978-0814798287.
4. Lopez, Iris (2008). Matters of Choice: Puerto Rican Women's Struggle for Reproductive Freedom. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. p. xiii. ISBN 978-0813543734.
5. Rylko-Bauer, Barbara (2014). A Polish Doctor in the Nazi Camps: My Mother's Memories of Imprisonment, Immigration, and a Life Remade. University of Oklahoma. pp. 91–92. ISBN 978-0806145860.
6. "24 Countries in Europe Require Sterilization of Trans People". TGEU. 17 May 2013. Retrieved 4 January 2022.
7. ^ Hurtes, Sarah (25 November 2023). "Despite Bans, Disabled Women Are Still Being Sterilized in Europe". New York Times. Retrieved 3 April 2024.
8. ^ "UN Report: Forced Sterilization of Trans People "is Torture"". National Center for Transgender Equality. 27 February 2013. Retrieved 4 January 2022.
9. ^ Baxandall, Rosalyn; Gordon, Linda (2000). Dear Sisters. New York: Basic Books. pp. 151–152. ISBN 978-0-465-01707-2.
10. Barton-Hanson, Renu (2015). "Sterilization of men with intellectual disabilities" (PDF). Medical Law International. 15 (1). Sage Publications: 49–73. doi:10.1177/0968533215592444. ISSN 0968-5332. S2CID 146218981.
11. "Report of the Special Rapporteur on Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (A/HRC/22/53)" (PDF). Ohchr.org. para. 78. Archived (PDF) from the original on 24 August 2016. Retrieved 28 October 2013.
12. "Eliminating forced, coercive and otherwise involuntary sterilization". World Health Organization. Archived from the original on 11 July 2015. Retrieved 14 July 2024.
13. "Interact Worldwide Downloads". Interact Worldwide. Archived from the original on 15 November 2011.
14. Egnor, Michael (14 August 2009). "The Inconvenient Truth About Population Control, Part 2; Science Czar John Holdren's Endorsement of Involuntary Sterilization". evolutionnews.org. Archived from the original on 5 October 2016. Retrieved 3 October 2016.
15. Goldberg, Michelle (21 July 2009). "Holdren's Controversial Population Control Past". The American Prospect. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
16. McCoy, Terrence. "The forgotten roots of India's mass sterilization program". Washington Post. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
17. Heer, David M. (March 1975). "Marketable licenses for babies: Boulding's proposal revisited". Social Biology. 22 (1): 1–16. doi:10.1080/19485565.1975.9988142. ISSN 0037-766X. PMID 1188404.
18. Russett, Bruce M. (June 1970). "Communications". Journal of Conflict Resolution. 14 (2): 287–291. doi:10.1177/002200277001400209. ISSN 0022-0027. S2CID 220640867.
19. ^ "The Human Predicament: Finding a Way Out" (PDF). Fox News.
20. "Glenn Beck claims science czar John Holdren proposed forced abortions and putting sterilants in the drinking water to control population". PolitiFact. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
21. Mann, Charles C. "The Book That Incited a Worldwide Fear of Overpopulation". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
22. Hartmann, Betsy (2016). Reproductive rights and wrongs : the global politics of population control. Haymarket Books. ISBN 978-1-60846-733-4. OCLC 945949149.
23. "A Post-Colonial Feminist Critique of Population Control Policies -". Australian Youth Health Connect. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
24. "Feminist Perspectives on Population Issues | Encyclopedia.com". www.encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
25. Bhatia, Rajani; Sasser, Jade S.; Ojeda, Diana; Hendrixson, Anne; Nadimpally, Sarojini; Foley, Ellen E. (3 April 2019). "A feminist exploration of 'populationism': engaging contemporary forms of population control". Gender, Place & Culture. 27 (3): 333–350. doi:10.1080/0966369x.2018.1553859. ISSN 0966-369X. S2CID 150974096.
26. "Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence". Archived from the original on 31 May 2017. Retrieved 7 August 2017.
27. Horton, Guy (April 2005). "12.52 Crimes against humanity" (PDF). Dying Alive – A Legal Assessment of Human Rights Violations in Burma. The Netherlands Ministry for Development Co-Operation. p. 201. Archived from the original (PDF) on 13 January 2016. Horton references RSICC/C, Vol. 1 p. 360
28. "Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court". legal.un.org. Archived from the original on 19 October 2013. Retrieved 13 July 2012.
29. "Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court". United Nations Treaty Collection. United Nations. Archived from the original on 9 November 2019. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
30. "Forced Sterilization and Mandatory Divorce: How a Majority of Council of Europe Member States' Laws Regarding Gender Identity Violate the Internationally and Regionally Established Human Rights of Trans* People". Berkeley Journal of International Law. 33 (1). 2015. doi:10.15779/Z381W07 (inactive 1 November 2024). Unfortunately, this is not an anomaly: this is the lived experience of trans* people in dozens of countries throughout the world, including the twenty-one Council of Europe (COE) Member States that currently require proof of sterilization to change one's legal sex categorization. It would be advisable for LGBTQ activists to seriously consider developing LGBTQ-specific international and regional human rights treaties.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2024 (link)
31. ^ "পরিবার পরিকল্পনা | উত্তরখান ইউনিয়ন | উত্তরখান ইউনিয়ন". uttarkhanup.dhaka.gov.bd. Archived from the original on 12 November 2017. Retrieved 11 November 2017.
32. AR, Khan; I, Swenson (1978). "Acceptability of male sterilization in Bangladesh: its problems and perspectives". Bangladesh Development Studies. 6 (2). Archived from the original on 13 November 2017. Retrieved 12 November 2017.
33. L, Liskin; JM, Pile; WF, Quillan (1983). "Vasectomy—safe and simple". Population Reports. Series D: Sterilization Male (4). Archived from the original on 12 November 2017. Retrieved 12 November 2017.
34. ^ Khan, Atiqur Rahman; Swenson, Ingrid E.; Rahman, Azizur (1 January 1979). "A Follow-up of Vasectomy Clients in Rural Bangladesh". International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics. 17 (1): 11–14. doi:10.1002/j.1879-3479.1979.tb00108.x. ISSN 1879-3479. PMID 39831. S2CID 22375165.
35. ^ Claiborne, William (28 January 1983). "Bangladesh's Midwives Promote Birth Control". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Archived from the original on 12 November 2017. Retrieved 12 November 2017.
36. "The Bangladesh government plans a mass voluntary sterilization of..." UPI. Archived from the original on 13 November 2017. Retrieved 11 November 2017.
37. "Impoverished Bangladesh plans sterilization program". UPI. Archived from the original on 12 November 2017. Retrieved 11 November 2017.
38. Miles and Shiva 1993
39. ^ AsiaNews.it. "BANGLADESH Healthcare in Bangladesh: only sterilization and vasectomies are free". AsiaNews. Archived from the original on 12 November 2017. Retrieved 12 November 2017.
40. "স্থায়ী জন্মনিয়ন্ত্রণ পদ্ধতির সেবা". www.nhd.gov.bd. Archived from the original on 4 January 2018. Retrieved 12 November 2017.
41. Rosenberg, M. J.; Rochat, R. W.; Akbar, J.; Gould, P.; Khan, A. R.; Measham, A.; Jabeen, S. (August 1982). "Sterilization in Bangladesh: mortality, morbidity, and risk factors". International Journal of Gynaecology and Obstetrics. 20 (4): 283–291. doi:10.1016/0020-7292(82)90057-1. ISSN 0020-7292. PMID 6127262. S2CID 26123485.
42. Grimes, D. A.; Peterson, H. B.; Rosenberg, M. J.; Fishburne, J. I.; Rochat, R. W.; Khan, A. R.; Islam, R. (April 1982). "Sterilization-attributable deaths in bangladesh". International Journal of Gynaecology and Obstetrics. 20 (2): 149–154. doi:10.1016/0020-7292(82)90029-7. ISSN 0020-7292. PMID 6125437. S2CID 24472598.
43. Grimes, D. A.; Satterthwaite, A. P.; Rochat, R. W.; Akhter, N. (November 1982). "Deaths from contraceptive sterilization in bangladesh: rates, causes, and prevention". Obstetrics and Gynecology. 60 (5): 635–640. ISSN 0029-7844. PMID 7145254.
44. Hartmann, B. (June 1991). "". Temas de Poblacion. 1 (2): 51–55. PMID 12284143.
45. solutions, EIU digital. "Global Liveability Ranking 2015 – The Economist Intelligence Unit". www.eiu.com. Archived from the original on 10 August 2017. Retrieved 12 November 2017.
46. "Dhaka 2nd least liveable city in the world". The Daily Star. 19 August 2015. Archived from the original on 5 September 2017. Retrieved 12 November 2017.
47. ^ "Bangladesh to offer sterilisation to Rohingya in refugee camps". The Guardian. Agence France-Presse. 28 October 2017. ISSN 0261-3077. Archived from the original on 4 November 2017. Retrieved 12 November 2017.
48. "Bangladesh 'plans to offer to sterilise Rohingya Muslims' as refugee population grows". The Independent. 29 October 2017. Archived from the original on 13 November 2017. Retrieved 12 November 2017.
49. ^ Hartmann, Betsy (2016). Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population Control. Chicago: Haymarket Books.
50. Dalsgaard, Anne Line (2004). Matters of Life and Longing: Female Sterilisation in Northeast Brazil. Museum Tusculanum Press.
51. Corrêa, Sonia; Petchesky, Rosalind (1994). Reproductive and Sexual Rights: A Feminist Perspective. United Kingdom: Routledge. pp. 134–147.
52. Almeida, Marina Nogueira; Silva, Adalene Ferreira Figueiredo da (10 July 2019). "Voluntary and Compulsory Sterilization in Brazil and the Reproductive Rights of Women". AG About Gender - Rivista internazionale di studi di genere. 8 (15). doi:10.15167/2279-5057/AG2019.8.15.1056. ISSN 2279-5057.
53. ^ "Court-ordered sterilization investigated in Brazil". AP NEWS. 21 June 2018. Retrieved 8 April 2021.
54. "Who decides over Janaina's body? A case of forced sterilization in Brazil". openDemocracy. Retrieved 8 April 2021.
55. "Sterilization of Indigenous Women in Canada". The Canadian Encyclopedia. 22 October 1921. Retrieved 9 December 2024.
56. Stote, K. (2015). An Act of Genocide: Colonialism and the Sterilization of Aboriginal Women. Fernwood Publishing. p. intro. ISBN 978-1-55266-732-3.
57. ^ Rutherford, Gillian (27 June 2022). "Reproductive control of Indigenous women continues around the world, say survivors and researchers". University of Alberta. Retrieved 9 December 2024.
58. "CHAPTER 59. An Act respecting Sexual Sterilization. - BC Laws". Retrieved 9 December 2024.
59. Cheng, Maria (12 July 2023). "Canada's Indigenous women forcibly sterilized decades after other rich countries stopped". CTVNews. Retrieved 10 December 2024.
60. Zingel, Avery (9 July 2019). "Indigenous women come forward with accounts of forced sterilization, says lawyer". CBC. Retrieved 10 December 2024.
61. Fournier, Sylvie (24 September 2021). "Black, Indigenous mothers say they were sterilized without full consent at Quebec hospitals". CBC. Retrieved 9 December 2024.
62. "Eugenics in Canada". The Canadian Encyclopedia. 22 October 1921. Retrieved 10 December 2024.
63. Shawana, Christine; Ryan, Chaneesa; Ali, Abrar (28 January 2021). "Forced or Coerced Sterilization in Canada: An Overview of Recommendations for Moving Forward". International Journal of Indigenous Health. 16 (1). University of Toronto Libraries - UOTL. doi:10.32799/ijih.v16i1.33369. ISSN 2291-9376.
64. Government of Canada, Public Services and Procurement Canada (1 July 2002). "The scars that we carry : forced and coerced sterilization of persons in Canada. Part II / Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights ; the Honourable Salma Ataullahjan, chair, the Honourable Wanda Thomas Bernard, deputy chair.: YC32-0/441-4E-PDF - Government of Canada Publications - Canada.ca". publications.gc.ca. Retrieved 20 October 2023.
65. Ryckewaert, Laura (25 March 2024). "Senate bill seeking to criminalize forced sterilizations raises concerns over unintended consequences". The Hill Times. Retrieved 18 August 2024.
66. ^ "Thousands at risk of forced sterilization in China". Amnesty International. 22 April 2010. Archived from the original on 14 March 2012. Retrieved 9 April 2012.
67. "China acts on forced abortion". BBC. 20 September 2005. Archived from the original on 10 February 2009. Retrieved 9 April 2012.
68. Enforcement of One-Child Policy Targets 'The Rich and Famous' in Zhangzhou, China, Forbes, 20 September 2013. "Enforcement of One-Child Policy Targets 'The Rich and Famous' in Zhangzhou, China". Forbes. Archived from the original on 9 September 2017. Retrieved 29 September 2017.
69. "Neo-Malthusianism and Coercive Population Control in China and India: Overpopulation Concerns Often Result in Coercion". Cato Institute. 21 July 2020. Retrieved 9 April 2021.
70. Stavrou, David (17 October 2019). "A Million People Are Jailed at China's Gulags. I Managed to Escape. Here's What Really Goes on Inside". Haaretz.
71. Handley, Erin (23 September 2019). "'Deeply disturbing' footage surfaces of blindfolded Uyghurs at train station in Xinjiang". ABC News.
72. Fifield, Anna (28 November 2019). "TikTok's owner is helping China's campaign of repression in Xinjiang, report finds". The Washington Post.
73. "China cuts Uighur births with IUDs, abortion, sterilization". Associated Press. 29 June 2020. Retrieved 1 July 2020.
74. "Pompeo calls report of forced sterilisation of Uighurs 'shocking'". www.aljazeera.com. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
75. ^ "Uyghur Genocide Shows Urgency of Combating Neo-Malthusianism". Cato Institute. 21 July 2020. Retrieved 9 April 2021.
76. Sterilized Roma accuse Czechs Archived 2017-09-15 at the Wayback Machine, BBC, 12 March 2007
77. For Gypsies, Eugenics is a Modern Problem – Czech Practice Dates to Soviet Era Archived 2015-10-16 at the Wayback Machine, Newsdesk, 12 June 2006
78. Final Statement of the Public Defender of Rights in the Matter of Sterilisations Performed in Contravention of the Law and Proposed Remedial Measures Archived 2014-08-09 at the Wayback Machine, Czech government, 2005
79. Measham and Lopez-Escobar, Anthony, Guillermo (2007). Against the Odds: Colombia's Role in the Family Planning Revolution. World Bank Publisher. pp. 121–135.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
80. ^ Jan, Olsen (29 August 1997). "Denmark to investigate its involuntary sterilization program". AP News.
81. Murray, Adrienne (30 September 2022). "Inuit Greenlanders demand answers over Danish birth control scandal". BBC News. Retrieved 5 November 2022.
82. "OVERBLIK: Transkønnedes kamp mod lovgivningen". avisen.dk (in Danish). 22 May 2018. Archived from the original on 9 August 2018. Retrieved 9 August 2018.
83. "Denmark Ends Forced Sterilisation for Sex Change". NDTV.com. Retrieved 4 January 2022.
84. B, Matty (13 June 2014). "Denmark Ends Forced Sterilization Of Transgender People". Queerty. Retrieved 4 January 2022.
85. "Finland to allow gender reassignment without sterilisation". reuters.com. 3 March 2023. Retrieved 8 May 2023.
86. "Eugenics Courts Named in Reich. The Montreal Gazette. January 3, 1934". Archived from the original on 15 February 2020. Retrieved 15 August 2017.
87. "The Montreal Gazette - Google News Archive Search". news.google.com.
88. Robert Proctor, Racial hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), and Gisela Bock, "Nazi sterilization and reproductive policies" in Dieter Kuntz, ed., Deadly medicine: creating the master race (Washington, D.C.: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2004).
89. "The Pittsburgh Press - Google News Archive Search". news.google.com.
90. "From Kraepelin to Karadzic: Psychiatry's Long Road to Genocide" Author Robert Kaplan. From book title "Genocide Perspectives IV" (pp.122-165) Page 133. Date 2012.
91. "The connection between American eugenics and Nazi Germany, James Watson :: DNA Learning Center". Archived from the original on 21 February 2014. Retrieved 5 February 2014. |"The connection between American eugenics and Nazi Germany" James Watson speaks about Nazi eugenics
92. Ian Kershaw, Hitler: A Profile in Power, Chapter VI, first section (London, 1991, rev. 2001)
93. Santiso-Galvez and Bertrand, Roberto; Jane T. (2007). Guatemala: The Pioneering Days of the Family Planning Movement. World Bank Publications. pp. 137–154.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
94. ^ "The Indira enigma". Frontline. 11 May 2001. Archived from the original on 10 November 2006. Retrieved 28 July 2006.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
95. Leela Visaria and Rajani R. Ved, India's Family Planning Programme Policies, Practices and Challenges (Taylor & Francis, 2016) pp. 28-29
96. "A generation of lost manhood". The Times of India. 26 June 2015. Archived from the original on 7 January 2016.
97. Relying on Hard and Soft Sells India Pushes Sterilization, New York Times, 22 June 2011.
98. ^ "India's dark history of sterilisation". BBC News. 14 November 2014. Retrieved 8 April 2021.
99. ^ Wilson, Kalpana (1 April 2017). "In the name of reproductive rights: race, neoliberalism and the embodied violence of population policies" (PDF). New Formations. 91 (91): 50–68. doi:10.3898/newf:91.03.2017. ISSN 0950-2378. S2CID 148987919. Archived (PDF) from the original on 28 April 2019. Retrieved 16 December 2019.
100. "Male involvement and contraceptive methods for men". Frontline. September 1996. Archived from the original on 11 August 2006. Retrieved 28 July 2006.
101. "Sterilization: The Standard Choice in India". Global Health NOW. Archived from the original on 15 June 2021. Retrieved 8 April 2021.
102. "Mistreatment and Coercion: Unethical Sterilization in India" (PDF). Human Rights Law Network.
103. ^ Goswami Vernal, Triveni (28 February 2023). "Rights of Persons with Disabilities in India: Provisions, Promises and Reality". BAU Journal - Society, Culture and Human Behavior. 4 (2). doi:10.54729/2789-8296.1069. ISSN 2789-8296.
104. Singh, Shivalika (20 March 2023). "Forced Sterilization of Disabled Women in India: A Tale of Lost Autonomy". LSE Human Rights. Retrieved 3 April 2024.
105. Greenwood, Phoebe (28 February 2013). "Ethiopian women in Israel 'given contraceptive without consent'". The Guardian.
106. Nesher, Talila (27 January 2013). "Israel Admits Ethiopian Women Were Given Birth Control Shots". Haaretz.
107. ^ "国民優生法" [The Eugenic Protection Law]. Archived from the original on 5 February 2014. The 107th law that Japanese Government promulgated in 1940　(国民優生法) 第二条　本法ニ於テ優生手術ト称スルハ生殖ヲ不能ナラシムル手術又ハ処置ニシテ命令ヲ以テ定ムルモノヲ謂フ
108. Kimura, Rihito (1991). "Jurisprudence in Genetics". In Srám, R. J.; Bulyzhenkov, V.; Prilipko, L.; et al. (eds.). Ethical Issues of Molecular Genetics in Psychiatry. Springer-Verlag. pp. 157–166. Archived from the original on 7 November 2015.
109. "Hansen's sanitarium were houses of horrors". The Japan Times. 28 January 2005. Archived from the original on 6 June 2011., Sato, Hajime (February 2002). "Abolition of leprosy isolation policy in Japan: policy termination through leadership". Policy Studies Journal. 30 (1): 29–46. doi:10.1111/j.1541-0072.2002.tb02126.x.
110. "Korean Hansens patients seek redress". The Japan Times. 26 February 2004. Archived from the original on 5 June 2012.
111. "「旧優生保護法下における優生手術及び人工妊娠中絶等に対する補償立法措置に関する意見書」, 2018, 日本弁護士連合会" (PDF).
112. "SOSHIREN / 資料・法律−優生保護法". Soshiren.org. Archived from the original on 9 February 2012. Retrieved 13 July 2012.
113. "Japan says transgender people must be sterilised". The Economist. 14 March 2019. ISSN 0013-0613. Archived from the original on 19 March 2019. Retrieved 20 March 2019.
114. "Japan urged to lift sterilization requirement for transgender recognition". The Japan Times Online. 20 March 2019. ISSN 0447-5763. Archived from the original on 20 March 2019. Retrieved 20 March 2019.
115. ^ ""A Really High Hurdle": Japan's Abusive Transgender Legal Recognition Process". Human Rights Watch. 19 March 2019.
116. "Japan: Compelled Sterilization of Transgender People". Human Rights Watch. 19 March 2019. Retrieved 4 January 2022.
117. "Japan's Supreme Court upholds transgender sterilization requirement". NBC News. 25 January 2019. Retrieved 4 January 2022.
118. ^ Hida, Hikari (25 October 2023). "Transgender Ruling Is Step Forward for L.G.B.T.Q. Rights in Japan". New York Times. Retrieved 3 April 2024.
119. Ng, Kelly (3 July 2024). "Japan's top court says forced sterilisation unconstitutional". BBC News. Retrieved 3 July 2024.
120. Endo, Takashi (3 July 2024). "Top court rules old eugenic law unconstitutional, orders redress". The Asahi Shimbun. Retrieved 3 July 2024.
121. ^ "High Court of Kenya to Address Forced Sterilization of HIV-Positive Women and Collection of Names of People Living With HIV". Health and Human Rights. 16 July 2015. Retrieved 9 April 2021.
122. ^ "Kenya, Forced Sterilization, & Women with HIV". FXB Center for Health & Human Rights | Harvard University. 21 July 2015. Retrieved 4 January 2022.
123. Stephan, Jan; Kellogg, E. H. (1974). The world's laws concerning voluntary sterilization for family planning purposes. California Western International Law Journal, 5(1), 72-120.
124. ^ Jadhav, Apoorva; Vala-Haynes, Emily (November 2018). "Informed Choice and Female Sterilization in South Asia and Latin America". Journal of Biosocial Science. 50 (6): 823–839. doi:10.1017/S0021932017000621. ISSN 0021-9320. PMID 29343307.
125. ^ El Estado como "aparato reproductor" de violencia contra las mujeres. Violencia contra las mujeres y tortura u otros malos tratos en ámbitos de salud sexual y reproductiva en América Latina y el Caribe. United Kingdom: Amnesty International Publications. 2016. p. 28.
126. El Estado como "aparato reproductor" de violencia contra las mujeres. Violencia contra las mujeres y tortura u otros malos tratos en ámbitos de salud sexual y reproductiva en América Latina y el Caribe (in Spanish). United Kingdom: Amnesty International Publications. 2016. p. 27.
127. ^ "Mass sterilization scandal shocks Peru". BBC News. 24 July 2002. Archived from the original on 30 June 2006. Retrieved 30 April 2006.
128. Carranza Ko, Ñusta (4 September 2020). "Making the Case for Genocide, the Forced Sterilization of Indigenous Peoples of Peru". Genocide Studies and Prevention. 14 (2): 90–103. doi:10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1740. ISSN 1911-0359.
129. ^ Stérilisations forcées des Indiennes du Pérou Archived 2014-05-10 at the Wayback Machine, Le Monde diplomatique, May 2004
130. "USAID Testimony: House International Relations Committee, Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, 2/25/98". USAID. Archived from the original on 6 September 2009. Retrieved 23 August 2011.
131. Thousands of Forced Sterilization Cases Reopened in Peru Archived 2014-04-26 at the Wayback Machine Impunity Watch, published 14 November 2011
132. "Peru forced sterilisations case reaches key stage". BBC News. 1 March 2021. Retrieved 4 January 2022.
133. thecanadian (12 December 2021). "Forced sterilizations: Fujimori should go to court in Peru". The Canadian. Retrieved 4 January 2022.
134. Allenova, Olga; Tsvetkova, Roza (4 April 2016). "ПНИ — это смесь больницы и тюрьмы" [PNI is a mixture of hospital and prison]. Коммерсантъ-Власть. No. 13. p. 12. Retrieved 7 February 2024.
135. Essack, Zaynab; Strode, Ann (2012). "'I feel like half a woman all the time': The impacts of coerced and forced sterilisations on HIV-positive women in South Africa". Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity. 26 (12): 24–34. doi:10.1080/10130950.2012.708583. ISSN 1013-0950. S2CID 1141875.
136. ^ "Dozens of HIV-positive S. African women forcibly sterilized". ABC News. Retrieved 9 April 2021.
137. ^ "Forced sterilisation in South Africa: They removed my uterus". BBC News. 27 February 2020. Retrieved 5 April 2021.
138. ^ "Report: South African Hospitals 'Forcibly' Sterilized Women With HIV". Time. Retrieved 5 April 2021.
139. Steriliseringsfrågan i Sverige 1935–1975 Archived 2012-02-05 at the Wayback Machine, SOU 2000:20, in Swedish with an English summary.
140. Tydén, Mattias (2002). Från politik till praktik: de svenska steriliseringslagarna 1935–1975. Stockholm studies in history, 0491-0842; 63 (in Swedish) (2., utvidgade uppl. ed.). Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International. p. 59. ISBN 978-91-22-01958-9.
141. ^ Balz, Dan (29 August 1997). "SWEDEN STERILIZED THOUSANDS OF 'USELESS' CITIZENS FOR DECADES". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
142. Pasulka, Nicole. "Forced Sterilization for Transgender People in Sweden". Mother Jones. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
143. ^ Nelson, Rebecca (14 January 2013). "Transgender People in Sweden No Longer Face Forced Sterilization". Time. ISSN 0040-781X. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
144. "Sweden announces to pay compensation to trans people". TGEU. 28 March 2017. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
145. Gilbert, Martin. Churchill and Eugenics Archived 2013-12-15 at the Wayback Machine
146. "Eugenics in Britain". English Heritage. Retrieved 14 February 2024.
147. Gallagher, James (4 February 2015). "Mother of six 'can be sterilised' – court ruling". BBC News. Archived from the original on 8 February 2015. Retrieved 12 February 2015.
148. Iredale, Rachel (2000). "Eugenics And Its Relevance To Contemporary Health Care". Nursing Ethics. 7 (3): 205–14. doi:10.1177/096973300000700303. PMID 10986944. S2CID 37888613.
149. Leonard, Thomas C. (2005). "Retrospectives: Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive Era" (PDF). Journal of Economic Perspectives. 19 (4): 207–224. doi:10.1257/089533005775196642. Archived (PDF) from the original on 18 December 2016.
150. Hansen, King, Randall, Desmond (Summer 2017). "Eugenic Ideas, Political Interests, and Policy Variance: Immigration and Sterilization Policy in Britain and the U.S". World Politics. 53 (2): 237–263. doi:10.1353/wp.2001.0003. PMID 18193564. S2CID 19634871. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 August 2017. Retrieved 23 September 2018.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
151. Interview with Alexandra Minna Stern, Ph.D. of University of Michigan in Spanish newspaper El País published on 12 July 2013 Archived 2013-07-15 at the Wayback Machine
152. Kevles, Daniel (12 April 1985). In the name of eugenics: Genetics and the uses of human heredity (1st ed.). New York: Knopf. ISBN 978-0-394-50702-6.
153. The Indiana Supreme Court overturned the law in 1921 in "Williams et al v. Smith, 131 NE 2 (Ind.), 1921" (PDF). Northeastern Reporter. 131: 2. Archived from the original (PDF) on 1 October 2008.
154. McDaniel, Rodger (2013). Dying for Joe McCarthy's Sins: The Suicide of Wyoming Senator Lester Hunt. Cody, Wyoming: WordsWorth. pp. 40ff. ISBN 978-0983027591.
155. Kluchin, Rebecca (2009). Fit to Be Tied: Sterilization and Reproductive Rights in America, 1950–1980. Rutgers: Rutgers University Press.
156. "A 1970 Law Led to the Mass Sterilization of Native American Women. That History Still Matters". Time. Retrieved 27 March 2020.
157. Ruiz and Sanchez Korrol, Vicki L and Virginia (2006). Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia.
158. ^ Governor John Kitzhaber (2 December 2002). "Proclamation of Human Rights Day, and apology for Oregon's forced sterilization of institutionalized patients". Archived from the original on 28 May 2014. Retrieved 16 February 2012.
159. Julie Sullivan. (2002). "State will admit sterilization past Archived 2016-01-07 at the Wayback Machine", Portland Oregonian, 15 November 2002. (Mirrored in Eugene Register-Guard, 16 November 2002, at Google News.)
160. On California sterilizations and their connection to the Nazi program, see: Stefan Kühl, The Nazi connection: Eugenics, American racism, and German National Socialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Alexandra Stern, Eugenic nation: faults and frontiers of better breeding in modern America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); and Wendy Kline, Building a better race: gender, sexuality, and eugenics from the turn of the century to the baby boom (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).
161. "Poe v. Lynchburg Training School and Hospital, 518 F. Supp. 789 (W.D. Va. 1981)". Justia US Law. Archived from the original on 29 September 2015.
162. ^ "RCW 9.92.100: Prevention of procreation". Archived from the original on 7 April 2018. Retrieved 7 April 2018.
163. "Note that this is not a comprehensive list of states which had sterilization laws on the books at any given time (some states had their laws overturned in courts very early on) nor an indication of when states' laws were active (some ceased to be used much earlier)". Toolan.com. Archived from the original on 17 April 2012. Retrieved 13 July 2012.
164. "Office for Justice for Sterilization Victims". North Carolina Department of Administration. Archived from the original on 2 April 2014.
165. "North Carolina offers $10 million for victims of forced-sterilization program". Fox News. 27 July 2013. Archived from the original on 1 August 2013. Retrieved 3 August 2013.
166. VA Man Agrees to Get Vasectomy as Part of Plea Deal, Fox News Insider, 24 June 2014. "VA Man Agrees to Get Vasectomy as Part of Plea Deal". 24 June 2014. Archived from the original on 20 October 2014. Retrieved 16 October 2014.
167. "'Stop Having Kids!': Judge Orders Man Owing $100K in Child Support Payments to Quit Procreating". Fox News Insider. 5 February 2013. Archived from the original on 20 October 2014. Retrieved 16 October 2014.
168. Maillard, Kevin (2013). "Serial Paternity" (PDF). Mich. St. L. Rev. 1369. Archived (PDF) from the original on 5 January 2017. Retrieved 29 October 2016. By conditioning reproduction on an event unlikely to happen, this amounts to constructive sterilization—an indirect prohibition on reproduction.
169. ^ "Survivors of California's forced sterilizations: 'It's like my life wasn't worth anything'". the Guardian. 19 July 2021. Retrieved 4 January 2022.
170. Independent Lens | Belly of the Beast | Season 22 | Episode 4, retrieved 4 January 2022
171. "ICE detainees' alleged hysterectomies recall a long history of forced sterilizations | University of Toronto Mississauga". www.utm.utoronto.ca. 2 October 2020. Retrieved 24 January 2021.
172. "More immigrant women say they were abused by Ice gynecologist". The Guardian. 22 December 2020. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
173. "Mexico demands the US for answers on alleged migrant hysterectomies". The Yucatan Times. 29 September 2020. Retrieved 24 January 2021.
174. "Mexico demands the US for answers on alleged migrant hysterectomies". The Yucatan Times. 29 September 2020. Retrieved 4 January 2022.
175. "Buck v. Bell". Archived from the original on 23 June 2017. Retrieved 27 June 2017.
176. Kluchin, Rebecca M (2011). Fit to be Tied: Sterilization and Reproductive Rights in America, 1950–1980. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 9780813549996. Archived from the original on 10 June 2016. Retrieved 14 August 2015.
177. On the legal history of eugenic sterilization in the U.S., see Lombardo, Paul. "Eugenic Sterilization Laws". Eugenics Archive. Archived from the original on 1 July 2017.
178. ^ "The Right to Self-Determination: Freedom from Involuntary Sterilization". Disability Justice. 11 March 2014. Retrieved 12 March 2021.
179. Committee on Ethics (2007). "ACOG Committee Opinion No. 371: Sterilization of Women, Including Those with Mental Disabilities". Obstetrics & Gynecology. 110 (1): 217–220. doi:10.1097/01.AOG.0000263915.70071.29. PMID 17601925.
180. Involuntary sterilization of persons with mental retardation: An ethical analysis, Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Reviews, Volume 9, Issue 1, pages 21–26, 2003. Diekema, Douglas S. (2003). "Involuntary sterilization of persons with mental retardation: An ethical analysis". Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Reviews. 9 (1): 21–26. doi:10.1002/mrdd.10053. PMID 12587134.
181. Denekens, JP; Nys, H; Stuer, H (1999). "Sterilization of incompetent mentally handicapped persons: a model for decision making". Journal of Medical Ethics. 25 (3): 237–241. doi:10.1136/jme.25.3.237. PMC 479215. PMID 10390678.
182. Ashley Revisited: A Response to the Critics, American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 10, Issue 1, January 2010. "Ashley Revisited: A Response to the Critics | Bioethics.net". Archived from the original on 7 August 2012. Retrieved 27 March 2013.
183. The Ashley Treatment, March 2007. "The "Ashley Treatment", Towards a Better Quality of Life for "Pillow Angels"" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 16 February 2015. Retrieved 16 October 2014.
184. ^ Reiter, Jesse (6 November 2018). "Involuntary Sterilization of Disabled Americans: An Historical Overview". www.abclawcenters.com. Retrieved 12 March 2021.
185. ^ Amy, Jean-Jacques; Rowlands, Sam (19 April 2018). "Legalised non-consensual sterilisation – eugenics put into practice before 1945, and the aftermath. Part 2: Europe" (PDF). The European Journal of Contraception & Reproductive Health Care. 23 (3): 194–200. doi:10.1080/13625187.2018.1458227. ISSN 1362-5187. PMID 29671357. S2CID 4981162. Archived (PDF) from the original on 5 March 2020. Retrieved 16 December 2019.
186. Ginzberg, Janet F. (Fall 1992). "NOTE: COMPULSORY CONTRACEPTION AS A CONDITION OF PROBATION: THE USE AND ABUSE OF NORPLANT". Brooklyn Law Review. 58.
187. ^ Berger, Emily (May 2007). "THE LEGAL RIGHTS OF THE POOR AND MINORITY TO HAVE FAMILIES: JUDGES AS FAMILY PLANNERS, THE VILIFICATION OF THE POOR, AND DESTRUCTION OF THE BLACK FAMILY". Rutgers Race & the Law Review. 8: 259–290.
188. ^ Borrero, Sonya; Zite, Nikki; Creinin, Mitchell D. (October 2012). "Federally Funded Sterilization: Time to Rethink Policy?". American Journal of Public Health. 102 (10): 1822–1825. doi:10.2105/ajph.2012.300850. ISSN 0090-0036. PMC 3490665. PMID 22897531.
189. Stern, Alex (23 July 2013). "Sterilization Abuse in State Prisons". Huffington Post. Archived from the original on 21 April 2014.
190. "SB 1135". CA Gov. Archived from the original on 2 October 2014. Retrieved 17 September 2014.
191. ^ Mass, Bonnie (1 January 1977). "Puerto Rico: a Case Study of Population Control". Latin American Perspectives. 4 (4): 66–79. doi:10.1177/0094582x7700400405. PMID 11619430. S2CID 416021.
192. ^ Thimmesch, Nick (May 1968). "Puerto Rico and Birth Control". Journal of Marriage and Family. 30 (2): 252–262. doi:10.2307/349251. JSTOR 349251.
193. "Forced Sterilization in Puerto Rico " Family Planning". stanford.edu. Archived from the original on 21 July 2017. Retrieved 25 July 2017.
194. "Puerto Rico Revisited " Family Planning". stanford.edu. Archived from the original on 8 December 2016. Retrieved 25 July 2017.
195. Abortion in Puerto Rico: The limits of colonial legality, Yamila Azize-Vargas and Luis A. Avilés, Reproductive Health Matters 5(9) 1 May 1997, page 56 (page 2 of the pdf)
196. ^ Lopez, Iris (1993). "Agency And Constraint: Sterilization And Reproductive Freedom Among Puerto Rican Women In New York City". Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development. 22 (3).
197. ^ Briggs, Laura (2002). Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-22255-7.
198. ^ Ramirez de Arellano, Annette B.; Seipp, Conrad (1983). Colonialism, Catholicism, and Contraception: A History of Birth Control in Puerto Rico. The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-8078-1544-1.
199. ^ Gutierrez, Elena R.; Fuentes, Liza (2009–2010). "Population Control by Sterilization: The Cases of Puerto Rican and Mexican-Origin Women in the United States". Latino(a) Research Review. 7 (3).
200. Skinner, Nancy (18 February 2019). SB-1190 – Eugenics Sterilization Compensation Program. State of California. Archived from the original on 19 February 2019. Retrieved 19 February 2019.
201. ^ Presser, Harriet B. (November 1969). "The Role of Sterilization in Controlling Puerto Rican Fertility". Population Studies. 23 (3): 343–361. doi:10.2307/2172875. JSTOR 2172875. PMID 22073953.
202. ^ BBC News: Uzbekistan's policy of secretly sterilizing women Archived 2015-04-05 at the Wayback Machine BBC, published 2012-04-12, accessed 2012-04-12
203. ^ Crossing Continents: Forced Sterilization in Uzbekistan Archived 2016-09-03 at the Wayback Machine BBC, published 2012-04-12, accessed 2012-04-12
204. ^ Uzbeks Face Forced Sterilization Archived 2013-10-19 at the Wayback Machine The Moscow Times published 2010-03-10, accessed 2012-04-12
205. Antelava, Natalia (12 April 2012). "Uzbekistan's policy of secretly sterilising women". BBC World Service. Archived from the original on 2 March 2015.
206. Antelava, Natalia (12 April 2012). "Uzbekistan's policy of secretly sterilising women". BBC World Service. Archived from the original on 5 April 2015.
207. Shadow Report: UN Committee Against Torture Archived 2014-11-09 at the Wayback Machine United Nations, authors Rapid Response Group and OMCT, published November 2007, accessed 2012-04-12
208. Press Release: Committee Against Torture Hears Response of Uzbekistan Archived 2009-01-13 at the Wayback Machine United Nations, published 2007-10-12, accessed 2012-04-12
209. ^ Birth Control by Decree in Uzbekistan Archived 2013-10-19 at the Wayback Machine IWPR Institute for War & Peace Reporting, published 2005-11-18, accessed 2012-04-12
210. Uzbek women accuse state of mass sterilizations Archived 2017-06-25 at the Wayback Machine The Independent, published 2010-07-17, accessed 2012-04-12
211. Uzbekistan: Presidential Decree on Birth Rate Leads to Increased Sterilization | EurasiaNet.org Archived 2014-04-27 at the Wayback Machine published 2011-11-14, accessed 2012-04-12
212. Our Kids: EU Parliamentarians Applaud MCH Project in Uzbekistan Archived 2010-03-26 at the Wayback Machine, published 2010-10-28, accessed 2012-04-12
213. ^ Hackel, Joyce (12 April 2012). "Doctors in Uzbekistan Say Government Forcibly Sterilizing Women". PRI's The World. Theworld.org. Archived from the original on 30 August 2013.
214. "2010 Human Rights Report: Uzbekistan". 2010 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. United States Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. 8 April 2011. Archived from the original on 20 March 2020. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
215. ^ ""Akhborot" censors Karimov". RFE/RL's Uzbek Service. 17 May 2012. Archived from the original on 29 May 2012. Retrieved 17 May 2012.
216. ^ "Sterilization in Norway - a dark chapter?". www.eurozine.com. 9 April 2003. Retrieved 4 January 2022.
217. "Norway passes Sterilization Law". The Eugenics Archives. Archived from the original on 4 January 2022. Retrieved 4 January 2022.
218. Haave, Per (2007). "Sterilization Under the Swastika: The Case of Norway". International Journal of Mental Health. 36 (1): 45–57. doi:10.2753/IMH0020-7411360104. ISSN 0020-7411. JSTOR 41345200. S2CID 72843082.
219. Gunnar Broberg and Nils Roll-Hansen, eds., Eugenics And the Welfare State: Sterilization Policy in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland (Michigan State University Press, 2005), it is unclear whether genocide investigations in regard of Hun descendant and pure Aryan types has been undertaken, and if concealment is attempted through the prevalence of cremation and allegation of psychiatric treatment facial mimicry of Mongolian types.
220. "Finland". The Eugenics Archives. Retrieved 4 January 2022.
221. Hemminki, Elina; Rasimus, Anja; Forssas, Erja (1 December 1997). "Sterilization in Finland: From eugenics to contraception". Social Science & Medicine. 45 (12): 1875–1884. doi:10.1016/S0277-9536(97)00126-3. ISSN 0277-9536. PMID 9447636.
222. ^ Tommy Haemaelainen (5 July 2020). "Trans people in Finland are still being forcibly sterilised". Palatinate. Retrieved 4 January 2022.
223. Patel, Priti (14 July 2017). "Forced sterilization of women as discrimination". Public Health Reviews. 38: 15. doi:10.1186/s40985-017-0060-9. ISSN 0301-0422. PMC 5809857. PMID 29450087.
224. Wecker, Regina (2012). "Eugenics in Switzerland before and after 1945 – a Continuum?". Journal of Modern European History / Zeitschrift für moderne europäische Geschichte / Revue d'histoire européenne contemporaine. 10 (4): 519–539. doi:10.17104/1611-8944_2012_4_519. ISSN 1611-8944. JSTOR 26266047. S2CID 144049480.
225. "New laws to compensate victims of forced sterilisation". SWI swissinfo.ch. 13 March 2002. Retrieved 4 January 2022.
226. Patel, Priti (2017). "Forced sterilization of women as discrimination". Public Health Reviews. 38: 15. doi:10.1186/s40985-017-0060-9. PMC 5809857. PMID 29450087.

Further reading

Rights
Theoretical distinctions
Claim rights and liberty rights Individual and group rights Natural rights and legal rights Negative and positive rights
Human rights
Civil and political Economic, social and cultural Three generations
Rights by beneficiary
Accused Animals Autistic Children Consumers Creditors Deaf Disabled Elders Family Farmers Fetuses Humans Indigenous Intersex Kings LGBT Transgender Men Minorities Parents Fathers Mothers Patients Peasants Plants Prisoners Robots States Students Victims Women Workers Youth
Other groups of rights
Assembly Association Asylum Civil liberties Clothing Development Digital Education Fair trial Food Free migration Health Healthy environment Housing Linguistic Movement Property Repair Reproductive Rest and leisure Security Self defense Self-determination of people Sexuality Speech Water and sanitation
v t e

• Alvarado, Carmen; Tietze, C. (1947). "Birth Control in Puerto Rico". Human Fertility. 22 (1): 15–17.
• Back, K., R. Hill and J.M. Stycos. "The Puerto Rican Field Experience in Population Control." Human Relations (1956):315–334.
• "B.C. faces forced sterilization lawsuit". CBC News. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. 7 February 2003. Retrieved 7 September 2020.
• Clarke, Nic (2010). "Sacred Daemons: Exploring British Columbian Society's Perceptions of "Mentally Deficient" Children, 1870–1930". BC Studies. 144: Being Young: Journeys to Young Adulthood (144: Being Young: Journeys to Young Adulthood): 61–89. doi:10.14288/bcs.v0i144.1743.
• Dowbiggin, Ian Robert (2003). Keeping America Sane: Psychiatry and Eugenics in the United States and Canada 1880–1940. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0801483980.
• Grekul, Jana; Krahn, H.; Odynak (2004). "Sterilizing the 'Feeble-minded': Eugenics in Alberta, Canada, 1929–1972". Journal of Historical Sociology. 17 (4): 358–384. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6443.2004.00237.x.
• Hill, Reuben (1959). The family and population control: a Puerto Rican experiment in social change. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0807807507. OCLC 175122.
• Manitoba Law Reform Commission. Discussion Paper on Sterilization of Minors and Mentally Incompetent Adults. Winnipeg: 1990.
• Manitoba Law Reform Commission. Report on Sterilization and Legal Incompetence. Winnipeg: 1993.
• McLaren, Angus. Our Own Master Race: Eugenics in Canada, 1885–1945. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1990.
• Rosen, Christine (2004). Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/019515679X.001.0001. ISBN 978-0195156799.
• Spiro, Jonathan P. (2009). Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics, and the Legacy of Madison Grant. Univ. of Vermont Press. ISBN 978-1-58465-715-6.
• Tucker, William H. (2007). The funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-07463-9.
• Wahlsten, Douglas (1997). "Leilani Muir versus the Philosopher Kings: Eugenics on trial in Alberta". Genetica. 99 (2–3): 195–198. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.476.9688. doi:10.1007/bf02259522. PMID 9463073. S2CID 45536970.
• "Nine women sterilized in B.C. have lawsuits settled for $450,000". The Vancouver Sun'. 21 December 2005.
• Warren, Charles W.; Westoff, Charles F.; Herold, Joan M.; Rochat, Roger W.; Smith, Jack C. (1986). "Contraceptive Sterilization in Puerto Rico". Demography. 23 (3): 351–365. doi:10.2307/2061435. JSTOR 2061435. PMID 3758445. S2CID 5096252.

External links

• Forced Sterilization
• "Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Virginia, Eugenics, and Buck v. Bell" Archived 17 May 2008 at the Wayback Machine(US)
• "Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Virginia, Eugenics, and Buck v. Bell" (US)
• Eugenics Archive (US)
• "Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race" (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum exhibit) (Germany, US)
• Eugenics – A Psychiatric Responsibility (History of Eugenics in Germany)
• "Sterilization Law in Germany" (includes text of 1933 German law in appendix)
• "Genocide in Tibet – Children of Despair"(NGO Group for the Convention on the Rights of the Child)
• "Buck v. Bell (1927)" by N. Antonios and C. Raup at the Embryo Project Encyclopedia

v t e Women's health
Reproductive health	Reproductive tract External female genitalia (vulva) Clitoris Clitoral hood Labia minora Labia majora Vagina Cervix Uterus Fallopian tube Ovary Reproductive system disease Maternal health Pregnancy Unintended pregnancy Gravidity and parity Obstetrics Antenatal care Adolescent pregnancy Complications of pregnancy Hyperemesis gravidarum Ectopic pregnancy Miscarriage Obstetrical bleeding Gestational diabetes Hypertension Preeclampsia Eclampsia Childbirth Midwifery Preterm birth Multiple births Oxytocin Obstructed labor Cesarian section Retained placenta Obstetrical fistulae Vesicovaginal fistula Rectovaginal fistula Episiotomy Husband stitch Postpartum care Postpartum confinement Maternal deaths Perinatal mortality Stillbirths Abortion Mother-to-child transmission Sterilization Compulsory sterilization Breastfeeding and mental health Reproductive life plan Infertility Childlessness Assisted reproductive technology In vitro fertilization Parenting Adoption Fostering Contraception and family planning Intrauterine devices Oral contraceptives Condoms Male contraceptive Contraceptive prevalence Contraceptive security Planned parenthood Fertility awareness Menstruation Culture and menstruation Feminine hygiene Menarche Menstrual cycle Menstrual aids Cloth menstrual pad Menstrual cup Tampon Sanitary pad Dysmenorrhea Menorrhagia Amenorrhoea Menopause Hormone replacement therapy
Sexual health	Sexually transmitted infections Safe sex HIV Human papilloma virus HPV vaccine Pelvic inflammatory disease Female genital mutilation Clitoridectomy Infibulation Breast binding Breast health Breast ironing Child marriage Dyspareunia Forced marriage Gynaecological disorders Vaginitis Leblouh Polygamy Sexual intercourse Orgasm Puberty Sex differences Sex education
Non-reproductive health	Violence against women Abuse during childbirth Domestic violence Pregnancy Intimate partner violence Misogyny Sexual harassment Sexual assault Rape Femicide Gender discrimination Non-communicable diseases Cancer Lung cancer Breast cancer Uterine cancer Endometrial cancer Cervical cancer Papanicolaou test Ovarian cancer Cardiovascular disease Dementia Alzheimer's disease Bone health Osteoporosis Hip fracture Anaemia Mental health Anxiety Depression Major depressive disorder Urinary tract Urethra Urinary tract infection Urinary incontinence
Sociocultural factors	Poverty Disadvantaged Gender equality Healthcare inequality Gender disparities in health Social determinants of health Reproductive justice Women's empowerment
Politics, research and advocacy	United Nations The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women Declaration on the elimination of violence against women International Day of the Girl Child Commission on the Status of Women UN Women United States Office of Research on Women's Health Women's Health Initiative International Center for Research on Women Nurses' Health Study Black Women's Health Study Cartwright Inquiry Society for Women's Health Research
Women's health by country	China Ethiopia India Family planning Russia Birth control in the United States
Category Commons WikiProject

v t e Intersex
Human rights and legal issues	Compulsory sterilization Discrimination Human rights reports Legal recognition Malta declaration Medical interventions Sex assignment Sex characteristics (legal term) Yogyakarta Principles
Medicine and biology	Disorders of sex development Genetic diagnosis Hermaphrodite Medical interventions history Orchidometer Phall-O-Meter Prader scale Quigley scale Sexual differentiation
Society and culture	Endosex (antonym) Civil society organizations Fictional characters‎ Films Gender system Guevedoce Flag Intersex and LGBT Literature Military service People Religion Ancient Greek religion Aphroditus Hermaphroditus Judaism Androgynos Tumtum Researchers Sex verification in sports Television
History and events	History of surgery timeline Intersex Awareness Day Intersex Day of Remembrance International Intersex Forum
Rights by country	Argentina Australia Canada Chile China Colombia France Germany Kenya Malta Mexico Nepal New Zealand South Africa Spain Switzerland Taiwan Uganda United Kingdom United States military
See also	Children's rights Disability rights Gender LGBT Androgyny Non-binary gender Non-binary recognition Queer theory Third gender Transgender Sex differences in humans
Category

• Compulsory sterilization
• Birth control
• Disability in law
• Eugenics
• History of psychiatry
• Penology
• Punishments
• Reproductive rights
• Sterilization (medicine)
• Intersex and medicine
• Social problems in medicine