Campaign Stop Torture in Health Care
La esterilización forzada es tortura / Forced sterilisation is torture / La stérilisation forcée est une torture
The Campaign Stop Torture in Health Care compels everyone who sees their documentaries to feel indignant and take action, even if it is only a signature.
Maybe the person who watches the documentaries (you for example) thinks that to be forced to undergo an sterilization is a very remote reality, things that happens to other people (people in the moon, or in another continent at least or people too irresponsible), but that person should think that if somebody feels entitled to take a women freedom of choice away for any reason (anywhere, moon included), somebody else may feel entitled to take YOUR freedom of choice and may take the opportunity to do it during your most vulnerable moment. The point: a person is not a pawn to be used for what somebody (with power) may think is “the greater good”.
Well, everybody have had a bad flu or a bit of a fever and then have felt almost too weak to get a glass of water, well imagine that you are undergoing labour and then the nurse comes to you with “some forms to sign”, guess what you’ll sign anything, or maybe you are a man and you are enduring terrible pain because of an appendicitis and in the way to the operation room they stop you to “sign some forms” and then because you have AIDS (or because you are gay, or because of your ethnicity, etc) you wake up and you had an appendectomy and … a vasectomy.
As the campaign explains:
Health care settings should be places where human rights are realized. Yet, too often, they are places where human rights are severely abused, sometimes amounting to torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. This is especially true for socially marginalized groups—people living with HIV, sexual and gender minorities, people who use drugs, and people with intellectual disabilities or mental health problems—who may be deemed “deviant,” “incompetent,” and in need of evaluation or “curative” treatment through the health care system.
Finally to be absolutely clear:
“Forced sterilization is a method of medical control of a woman’s fertility without the consent of a woman. Essentially involving the battery of a woman—violating her physical integrity and security, forced sterilization constitutes violence against women.”
— United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women
Read "Government Accountability for Torture and Ill-Treatment in Health Settings" An Open Society Foundations Briefing Paper
Read “Against Her Will Forced And Coerced Sterilization Of Women Worldwide” By Open Society Foundations and Stop Torture in Health Care
