Government Admits Forced Sterilization
After talking about sterilization in class today, it made me think of several conversations that I had with Roma women in the Czech Republic. The Roma population, also known as gypsies (which is a derogatory term), is the minority population in the Czech Republic and throughout Central and Eastern Europe. I checked out Wikipedia's definition of Roma and it referenced a 2003 article in The Guardian about Roma in the Czech Republic. 75% of Roma children are educated at schools for children with special needs and learning disabilities and the majority of Roma adults are unemployed. In 2003 the percentage was 70%, compared to the national average of 6%.
Another difficulty that Roma women faced and may still be facing today is sterilization without consent. In 2009 the government finally admitted and apologized for sterilizing Roma women. Czech doctors were sterilizing women when they were giving birth. The women would be given the consent forms right before they gave birth and were pressured to sign papers that they did not understand. Many were threatened that if they weren't sterilized they would lose their children. Doctors were sterilizing the women to curb the traditionally high fertility rate of Roma women. The practice started during Communism to prevent "undesirables" from reproducing and supposedly ended in 1989, but the last recorded case was in 2003 and many activists still believe that this is occurring. Another article in Womensenews.org, Sterilized Roma Say They Did Not Consent, discusses the widespread discrimination that Roma women face in general and reiterates women getting sterilized without knowing what was happening.
The Roma, like people with disabilities, are pressured to be sterilized without fully understanding the process or what they are consenting to. Perpetuating the idea of undesirables and the image of a perfect, ideal body will not create a more understanding and accepting society, but potentially continue or increase sterilizations and abortions. It will continue to hinder the progress that many minority groups have made. By sterilizing the women, the Czech government and state-run hospitals re-enforced the idea that they were not as good as other women and they did not deserve to have more children.
I thought that Europe (although this is from my American, Western eyes) had moved past this with the end of the Cold War and USSR and Soviet rule and all of that. It worries me that these practices are still in place by any government but particularly one that witnessed the horrors of regimes that practiced these policies to achieve the "ideal" population. It lead us to global conflicts.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure that I know enough about this situation but it seems to me that this is what should be focused on in the news as opposed to the J Crew ad with the kid in pink toes. It bothers me that there are practices like this still occurring and I'm hearing here and not in mainstream where the international community could discourage this practice of the Czech government. These women are being treated as inferior to the rest of the population, just like people of color, people with disabilities, or any other marginalized group that comes to mind.