ABSTRACT
Women in dozens of developing countries have suffered the kinds of human rights abuses reported in Peru's sterilization campaign, from lack of informed consent to out-and-out coercion. In South Africa under apartheid, black South African women were given Depo-Provera shots by health care workers who told them that the injections will "help their milk supply." From the beginning of its population control programs in the 1960s, US Agency for International Development (USAID) has consistently referred to them as "voluntary." The Tiahrt Amendment is worth considering in detail, not only because the activities it forbids are a matter of historical record, but also because similar abuses continue to occur in dozens of family planning programs around the world, some funded by the United States, others not. The higher the percentage of women who have been surgically and chemically sterilized, the better their collective "reproductive health" is judged to be.
