In support of my allegations against Lutheran Social Services/Lutheran Refugee Services of Michigan & Health Alliance Plan of Michigan Forced Sterilization is defined by Wikipedia online encyclopedia as;
Compulsory sterilization, also known as forced sterilization (or compulsory sterilisation respectively forced sterilisation see spelling differences), programs are government policies in violation of human rights conventions which attempt to force people to undergo surgical or other sterilization. The reasons governments implement sterilization programs vary in purpose and intent.[1] In the first half of the 20th century, several such programs were instituted in non-human-rights-compliant countries around the world, usually as part of eugenics programs intended to prevent the reproduction and multiplication of members of the population considered to be carriers of defective, more often than not different and not inferior in a natural combination racial genetic traits.[2]
Managing population growth; sex discrimination; 'sex-normalizing' surgeries of intersex persons; and Statute of Rome attempted and other genocide acts against ethnic minorities, the HIV positive, and the mentally disabled have also been reasons compulsive sterilization has been used.[1] There are countries where transgender people are required to undergo sterilization before gaining legal recognition of their gender. This is not to be confused with forced sterilization not associated with a likely genocidal (re.: Statute of Rome) government program. However the Report of United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment states that LGBT people often suffer the medical abuses or forced surgeries (including female genital mutilation and male genital mutilation) despite the Principles 17 and 18 of the Yogyakarta Principles.[3]
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, An interagency statement. 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".
disabled people, often perceived as sexually inactive. 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 the benefit of carers.
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".
The report recommends a range of guiding principles for medical treatment, including ensuring patient autonomy in decision-making, ensuring non-discrimination, accountability and access to remedies.[1]
United States[edit]
Further information: Eugenics in the United States
A poster from a 1921 eugenics conference displays the U.S. states that had implemented sterilization legislation by then
The United States was the first country to concertedly undertake compulsory sterilization programs for the purpose of eugenics.[44] The heads of the program were avid believers in eugenics and frequently argued for their program. It was shut down due to ethical problems. The principal targets of the American program were the intellectually disabled and the mentally ill, but also targeted under many state laws were the deaf, the blind, people with epilepsy, and the physically deformed. According to the activist Angela Davis, women of predominantly ethnic minorities (such as Native Americans, as well as African-American women)[45] were sterilized against their will in many states, often without their knowledge while they were in a hospital for other reasons (e.g. childbirth).
Some sterilizations took place in prisons and other penal institutions, targeting criminality, but they were in the relative minority.[46] In the end, over 65,000 individuals were sterilized in 33 states under state compulsory sterilization programs in the United States in all likelihood without due multiethnic and ethnic minority perspective.[47][48]
The first state to introduce a compulsory sterilization bill was Michigan, in 1897, but the proposed law failed to garner enough votes by legislators to be adopted. 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,[49] followed closely by California and Washington in 1909. Sterilization rates across the country were relatively low (California being the sole exception) until the 1927 Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell which legitimized the forced sterilization of patients at a Virginia home for the intellectually disabled.[50] In the wake of that later decision, over 62,000 people in the United States, most of them women, were sterilized in service of a nationwide eugenics movement.[51] 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.[52]
Most sterilization laws could be divided into three main categories of motivations: eugenic (concerned with heredity), therapeutic (based on the idea that sterilization could cure one of sexual traits such as masturbation or pedophilia), or punitive (as a punishment for criminals), though of course these motivations could be combined in practice and theory (sterilization of criminals could be both punitive and eugenic, for example). Buck v. Bell asserted only that eugenic sterilization was constitutional, whereas Skinner v. Oklahoma ruled specifically against punitive sterilization. Most operations only worked to prevent reproduction (such as severing the vas deferens in males), though some states (Oregon and North Dakota in particular) had laws which called for the use of castration. In general, most sterilizations were performed under eugenic statutes, in state-run psychiatric hospitals and homes for the mentally disabled.[53] There was never a federal sterilization statute, though eugenicist Harry H. Laughlin, whose state-level "Model Eugenical Sterilization Law" was the basis of the statute affirmed in Buck v. Bell, proposed the structure of one in 1922.[54]
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. The Oregon Board of Eugenics, later renamed the Board of Social Protection, existed until 1983,[55] with the last forcible sterilization occurring in 1981.[56] The U.S. commonwealth 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 B. 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.[57] In recent years, the governors of many states have made public apologies for their past programs beginning with Virginia and followed by Oregon[55] 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, West Virginia, Wisconsin.[58]
As of January 2011, discussions were underway 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".[59] 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.[60]
The Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologist (ACOG) believes that mental disability is not a reason to deny sterilization. The opinion of ACOG is that "the physician must consult with the patients family, agents, and other caregivers" if sterilization is desired for a mentally limited patient.[61] 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." [62] The Journal of Medical Ethics claimed, in a 1999 article, that doctors are regularly confronted with request 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." [63] The American Journal of Bioethics published an article, in 2010, that concluded the interventions used in the Ashley treatment may benefit future patients.[64] 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.[65]
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.[66] 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.[67]
148 female prisoners in two California institutions were sterilized between 2006 and 2010 in a supposedly voluntary program involving the suppression of women of closer equal status in personal assertion capacity to men, but voluntary consent can not be given while under duress.[68] 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 inmate's life.[69]
Discussions have yet to begin regarding compensation for victims of forced sterilization in other states. Read More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization