Two women sterilized against their will have won large settlements in a court case in Prague that is seen as a first step toward securing justice for other victims of involuntary sterilization.
As far back as 2001, women living with HIV/AIDS were being sterilized in Namibian hospitals, without their autonomous consent. Shockingly, these women, whose cases the International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS began documenting in 2008, continue to wait for redress.
Rebecca Kluchin’s new book, Fit to Be Tied: Sterilization and Reproductive Rights in America, 1950-1980, explores a thirty year period of US history in which eugenic and neo-eugenic ideas were used to justify forced, coerced, and freely chosen sterilization.
After a year of unsuccessful lawsuits, a woman living with HIV and sterilized without her consent filed a complaint against Chile before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
