In Brasil: Sterilization is the best pill

The index of mass sterilization of women in Brazil is grave. Calculations of the Health Ministry estimate that 25 million Brazilian women have been sterilized. The index of sterilized women is greater in the poorest areas of the country (the northeast and central-west). 75.9 percent of the women in the state of Maranhao are sterilized. 71.9 percent in Goias and 63.3 percent in Mato Grosso. The incidence of sterilization is higher in Afro-Brazilian women revealing a racist component to this procedure. The majority of the sterilizations are done immediately after a woman gives birth to a child. In a country where birth control methods are almost the most expensive in the world, sterilization has become the most common form of birth control in Brazil. Denouncements continue to be made that many firms demand a pregnancy test at the time of a job interview and even subsidize sterilization surgeries. Sterilization is prohibited by law and by the medical ethical code. We are not talking about sterilization curative or therapeutic that occurs in cases such as removal of a tumor but are speaking of sterilization as a contraceptive method, voluntary, coerced or induced.

Click to expand...

uafan4life said:

Wow.
I know virtually nothing about this, save what you just posted. If true, though, it does potentially paint in a different light the rumors of attempts by American organizations to provide free or low-cost birth control to Brazilian women.
I'm curious as to your perspective on those rumors, as well, since you have a much closer tie to the country.

Click to expand...

ITAJU DA COLONIA, Brazil — It took only a little cajoling from the campaign workers to persuade Sonia Muniz to get sterilized. She was poor, they told her, and the congressman was doing her a favor by helping her limit her family size."I didn't want to do it," Muniz mutters, barely louder than the wind whipping by the deserted Indian Protection Service post in this northeastern village.But she went anyway."They made me. They had my name on a list," says Muniz, a woman who never went to school and didn't know her age without consulting her identity card.So Muniz, a Pataxo Ha-Ha-Hae Indian and mother of four, had her Fallopian tubes tied at a hospital owned by Roland Lavigne, a doctor and congressman famous around here for providing free women's health care in exchange for votes.

Click to expand...

Fujimori gained international support and USAID funding for the sterilizations by presenting them at the UN Beijing Conference on Women in 1995 as part of a progressive reproductive rights program—a classic case of ethnic cleansing masked in “development” rhetoric. The number of those sterilized under Fujimori’s so-called “family planning” program between 1996 and 2000 is estimated at 294,032 people, including 22,004 men, by Peru’s official human rights watchdog Defensoría del Pueblo. Other estimates are even higher.

Click to expand...

One woman recalls a nurse grabbing her hand and forcing a scrawled signature on the page. A medical resident training at the hospital at the time recalls seeing a colleague hold a syringe filled with pain meds in front of a suffering woman’s face: “You want this shot? Sign.” The women often did not know until years later that they’d been sterilized. Many were in the dark until approached by attorneys who, armed with hospital records provided by a whistle-blower, urged the women to join a class-action suit charging that the hospital had violated their civil rights.

Click to expand...

Nearly 150 women were sterilized in California's prisons without the state's approval, a practice that critics say targeted inmates who were seen as being at risk of serving a future jail term. Those numbers represent data from 2006 to 2010, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting, which first reported the news.Doctors performed tubal ligation surgeries on at least 148 female inmates at two facilities, reports CIR's Corey G. Johnson, with another 100 cases possibly taking place between 1997 and 2010. In that span, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation paid surgeons a total of nearly $150,000 for conducting the procedure.

Click to expand...

Former inmate Kimberly Jeffrey, 43, tells Johnson she resisted the pressure to get a tubal ligation done — pressure that she says came while she was under sedation and strapped to an operating table.

Click to expand...

After the war, eugenics was declared a crime against humanity -- an act of genocide. Germans were tried and they cited the California statutes in their defense -- to no avail. They were found guilty.

Click to expand...

As of April 22, the Irwin County facility in Ocilla, Ga., no longer held any immigrant women, after dozens ultimately stepped forward to report unnecessary medical procedures conducted by a local gynecologist, which the women said were performed without their consent, according to Times reporting. Several women were deported after speaking out publicly or testifying to federal investigators about their experience with the gynecologist, Dr. Mahendra Amin, who denies the allegations and remains under criminal investigation.

Click to expand...

A number of the women say they continue to suffer after-effects from the procedures, which included forced sterilizations and the removal of the uterus, ovaries and fallopian tubes, according to reports by independent medical experts and interviews by The Times. Some still do not know what exactly was done to them.

Click to expand...