Peruvian Forced Sterilization

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2011/10/peru-to-reopen-probe-into-forced-sterilization-of-hundreds-of-women.html




This short article from the Los Angeles Times reports about the Peruvian government's decision to reopen the case of forced or uniformed sterilization of impoverished women during the 1990s. Carried out under President Alberto Fujimori's regime, this practice was undertaken as a supposed attempt to reduce poverty, especially in the highland areas. Only now, some twenty years later, is the despicable policy getting the negative attention it deserves.


I had never heard about this forced sterilization in Peru specifically, although I was aware of it in other cases, such as to mentally handicapped people during the Holocaust. Talk about a human rights abuse, this for me is one of the most explicit examples of a human right violation. By forcing women (or tricking them) into undergoing sterilization processes, the government is effectively taking away the women's right to decide if she wants to create a family (at least biologically) and it also infringing on a women's right to do what she wishes with her own body. I hope this investigation brings the perpetrators of this policy to justice, although it will not give these women their ability to bear children back, nor bring those women who died from such procedures, and their families, much relief or satisfaction.