ABSTRACT
A person who is sterilised is unable to conceive naturally unless the process is reversed. The process of sterilisation may be voluntary or involuntary, the latter being generally associated with acquired or congenital disease, the proximate causes being more varied in women than in men. Non-consensual sterilisation can be used as a concealed method of genocide, something which arose in the 20th century out of a policy of racial improvement instigated by a European government. It is reasonable to suppose that this extreme example of involuntary sterilisation is a matter of history only. Many states of the United States repealed their statutes upholding eugenic sterilisation between 1960 and 1980 but left a legal vacuum in which the courts found themselves unable to accede to petitions for sterilisation of incompetents on the grounds that there was no statutory authority to do so.
