The shocking truth of the forced sterilisation of disabled women

The practice has been declared a human rights violation, but many countries around the world continue to grant controversial exceptions. With Europe pushing for a strict ban, watchdog organisations say not enough is being done to protect the vulnerable.

- SARAH HURTES & DAGNY LIND ERLENDSDOTTIR

Anita cannot speak or comprehend complex information. At 28, she communicates mostly with facial expressions and baby-like sounds. When excited, she washes her hands. When her periods cause cramping and pain, she moans and agitates, unable to understand.

To eliminate this monthly discomfort and ease the burden of caring for her, caregivers at an assisted-living home in Reykjavik, Iceland, proposed an unusually aggressive step. The home’s manager recommended that Anita undergo a hysterectomy, a major procedure to remove her uterus and end her periods.

Eirikur Smith, an official in Iceland’s disabilities office, discovered this plan last year during a routine visit to the home. “Does she even know if she wants children later?” he recalls asking. The manager, he says, was stunned. “She just laughed in my face.”

“‘Of course not,’” he says she replied. “‘Why would she ever want children?’”

Forced sterilisation, with its history of racism and eugenics, is banned under multiple international treaties. Thirty-seven European nations and the European Union have ratified the Istanbul Convention, which declares, without exception, that non-consensual sterilisation is a human rights violation.

But a New York Times investigation found over a third of those countries have made exceptions, often for people that the government deems too disabled to consent. Some countries have banned the practice but not actually criminalised it. And records show that the Istanbul treaty’s official watchdog has repeatedly criticised governments for not doing enough to protect disabled people.