An overview of the
effects of forced sterilization policies across
the Americas
From:
Five hundred years of Indigenous Resistance
Between 1965-71, an estimated 1 million women in
Brazil had been sterilized [45]. In Puerto Rico,
34% of all women of child-bearing age had been
sterilized by 1965 [46]. Between 1963-65, more
than 40,000 women in Colombia had been
sterilized [47]...
"Lee
Brightman, United Native Americans President,
estimates that of the Native population of
800,000 (in the US), as many as 42% of the women
of childbearing age and 10% of the men...have
been sterilized... The first official inquiry
into the sterilization of Native women...by Dr.
Connie Uri...reported that 25,000 Indian women
had been permanently sterilized within Indian
Health Services facilities alone through 1975...
"According to a 1970 fertilization study, 20% of
married Black women had been sterilized, almost
three times the percentage of white married
women. There was a 180% rise in the number of
sterilizations performed during 1972-73 in New
York City municipal hospitals which serve
predominantly Puerto Rican neighborhoods" [48].
Similar results were found in Inuit communities
in the Northwest Territories. Clearly,
"overpopulation" is not an issue in North
America, nor is it in South or Central America.
Canada
...In 1928 Alberta passed legislation allowing
school officials to forcibly sterilize Native
girls; British Columbia followed suit in 1933.
There is no accurate toll of forced
sterilizations because hospital staff destroyed
records in 1995 after police launched an
investigation. But according to the testimony of
a nurse in Alberta,
doctors sterilized entire groups of Native
children when they reached puberty.
The United
States
"In
the 1970s, it is estimated that
30% of all Puerto Rican women,
and 25-40% of American Indian women were
sterilized without their informed consent
-
American Friends Service Committee
[This was done by the U.S. Indian Health Service
and other agencies.]
Indigenous Women
within the United States
(1977)
A... Government Accounting Office (GAO) study
commissioned by Senator James Abourezk of South
Dakota, discovered that more than 3400 Native
American women of childbearing age had been
sterilized over a three year period in four
different Indian Health Service areas in the
Southwest.21 This figure is
particularly frightening given the declining
population of Native Americans--today there are
fewer than 800,000 in this country. It would be
comparable to sterilizing 452,000 non-white
women in the U.S. The study also found that many
of the consent forms to be illegal and not in
compliance with Indian Health Service
regulations. It also found that 36 women under
the age of 21 and been sterilized, despite the
court ordered moratorium on such sterilizations.
Latina women in the
United States
Luz Alvarez
Martinez, co-founder
of the National
Latina Health
Organization, says
that sterilization
abuse is also a
major problem for
Latinas. She points
out that government
funding is scarce
for abortions but
plentiful for
sterilization and
that, "We are not
given adequate
information so that
we can give truly
`informed consent'
for medical
procedures that
affect our
reproductive
choices." She cites
the case of
Chicanas sterilized
without their
knowledge in Los
Angeles county,
and the fact that in
New York Latinas
have a sterilization
rate seven times
higher than white
women and almost
twice that of Black
women.
From:
Organizing Women
From the Bottom Up:
http://www.nathannewman.org/EDIN/.mags/.cross/.39/.women/.miriam.htm
Puerto Rico
About the history of
forced sterilization
in Puerto Rico.
...Dr. Helen
Rodriguez-Trias
states that
population control
was indeed a social
policy in [Puerto
Rico] that targeted
a group that was
believed
"shouldn’t have
children"
by other groups
(Garcia 1985).
According to one
interview, each and
every female in one
extended family had
been sterilized. The
elder woman wept,
saying that the
family would end
with no more women
able to have
children (Garcia
1985).
Indigenous Women in Bolivia
Listing of a 1994 film, from:
http://www.lib.uconn.edu/online/research/bysubject/lasvideos.htm
Le Sang du Condor (Blood of the Condor)
(1994, 80 min.) (Video F 2230. 2. K4 S26) In
Spanish and Quechua with French subtitles.
A dramatization of an actual incident which
involved charges of sterilization of Quechuan
Indian women without their consent as part of a
birth control program administered by the United
States Peace Corps.
Indigenous Women in Brazil
At least eighty indigenous women of the
Pataxuh-he band in the Brazilian
state of Bahia have been sterilized by
Ronald Lavigne, who is a medical doctor
as well as a politician. Lavigne offers
sterilization to women (who cannot get
other types of birth control) every time
he runs for office. Some women have
complained after the fact that the
finality of tube-tying was not explained
to them.
Lamb reports that many of the operations were
undertaken on women desperate to reduce the size
of their families because many children in the
area die of malnutrition.
"This is genocide," Lamb reported Roberto
Liebgott, an activist with native peoples in
Bahia, to have said. In some villages, every
woman of child-bearing age has been sterilized,
leading to the probable demise of entire peoples
in a generation or two.
Indigenous Women in Mexico
Mexico's Indians Target of Sterilization 'Sweep'
...These
cases from [the Mexican state of] Guerrero come
amid increasing allegations of a pattern of
abuse across Mexico. Human rights groups cite
evidence that uni-lingual [non-Spanish-speaking]
Indians are being targeted by government
sterilization brigades in several states.
Recent reports
include women given tubal ligations without
their knowledge following Caesarean sections;
women being paid with a kilo of beans or
tomatoes for sterilization procedures they don't
understand; and a woman who couldn't conceive
because an IUD (intrauterine device) had been
implanted in her womb without her knowledge and
was embedded in her flesh.
Certainly there is
a push to sterilize people in Guerrero, where
one-seventh of the state's 3,000,000 people is
pure Indian...
More on Indigenous Women in Mexico
...In
Omaha, Nebraska, medical personnel at local
clinics caring for an influx of Mexican and
other Latin American immigrants say that many
women come to them complaining of having trouble
getting pregnant. The Omaha care-givers are left
to tell the women, many of whom are of
Mexican Indian ancestry, that they have been
sterilized or implanted with IUDs by Mexican
doctors. Most of the women express surprise at
this, to put it mildly, indicating that any form
of consent they may have been given was not
comprehended.
Peru
July, 2002 - Peru's Government Apologizes
for the forced
sterilization of 200,000 Indigenous Women in the
late 1990's.
A number of public health doctors in Peru (who
perform sterilizations of indigenous women) also
engaged in sexual assaults on their patients
before charges against the Peruvian state were
brought to the
Inter-American Commission of Human Rights.
Silence and Complicity
- Indigenous and other poor women and girls in
Peru face rape and other abuses from Peru's
public health service doctors.
Victory For Women In Peru
- Peru settles the case of Marina Machaca before
action by the Inter-American Commission of Human
Rights.
Marina Machaca, a 19-year old [indigenous] girl,
was raped by Doctor Gerardo Salmón Horna, a
doctor with the public hospital Carlos Monge
Medrano in Juliaca, Peru...
|
/ Welcome
