Sterilization and Its Discontents
Late last year, reports began
circulating in the Lima press
that women in remote rural
areas of Peru were being forcibly
sterilized. Two women reportedly
died because of the hasty and unsan-
itary conditions in which the steril-
ization procedures were carried out,
and numerous women say that they
were pressured by government
bureaucrats to have tubal ligations.
Some say they were told they would
lose their food subsidies if they
refused to submit to the procedure,
while others report that after giving
birth, they were promised that their
hospital expenses would be con-
doned if they agreed to be sterilized.
According to the Peruvian Medical
Federation, Ministry of Health
physicians were offered monetary
incentives based on the number of
sterilizations performed, and some
doctors feared losing their jobs if
they did not meet their “quota.”
Conservative Church leaders–
especially of the Opus Dei variant–
have launched a virulent attack
against the government’s population
policies. The Bishop of Ayacucho,
Juan Luis Cipriani, said that promot-
ing tubal ligation means “turning
Peru into a whorehouse.” Congress-
man Rafael Rey Rey, a member of
Opus Dei and until now a staunch
defender of President Alberto
Fujimori, has accused the govern-
ment of depriving the country of its
most precious resource–people–
and of trying to depopulate the
Peruvian countryside. While these
groups use the rhetoric of helping
the poor and caring about the fate of
Peruvian women, it is clear that their
intention is to undermine all family-
planning programs in Peru. Con-
servative pro-life groups in the U.S.
have joined the fray, seeking to end
all U.S. assistance to Peru.
Ironically those, like Rey Rey and
Cipriani, who have been the most
vociferous critics of Fujimori’s fam-
ily-planning policies, are also those
who have most vigorously defended
his drastic neoliberal policies. If
people are Peru’s most precious
resource, it is unclear how these sec-
tors justify the continued application
of an economic model that has pum-
meled ordinary Peruvians, increased
economic inequalities, and led
Peruvian women to a situation in
which they find themselves forced
to submit to sterilization procedures
in order to secure a loaf of bread
from the government.
Both the government sterilization
program and its neoconservative
critics deny the most fundamental
aspect of the issue-women’s right
to informed reproductive choice,
which includes not only full access
to contraception, but to safe and
legal abortion as well. While conser-
vative groups profess their concern
for the women who have died as a
result of unsafe sterilization proce-
dures, they rarely mention the much
larger number of women who die
yearly as a result of botched abor-
tions. Maternal mortality in Peru is
265 per 100,000 live births–one of
the highest rates in the region, and
abortion is responsible for 22% of
those deaths. True reproductive
choice for women in Peru-and all
of Latin America-means access to
sex education, contraception and
safe and legal abortion.
t is no surprise that the Fujimori
government has implemented
measures to forcibly bring
Peru’s population rate down in
order to meet so-called economic
and development goals. Back in the
late 1980s, a select group of mili-
tary officers wrote a document enti-
tled “Coup Plan”-a plan that
would later be put in practice by
Fujimori and his associates in
1992-which argued that “the most
important problem facing Peru is
that its demographic trends since
World War II have reached epi-
demic proportions. Population
growth must be stopped immedi-
ately,” concludes the document,
suggesting that the most “conve-
nient” method toward this end is
“the generalized use of sterilization
among culturally backward and eco-
nomically impoverished groups.”
There is no doubt that Fujimori’s
neo-Malthusian project sees the
elimination of the “surplus popula-
tion” as the solution to Peru’s
endemic poverty and the social
unrest it breeds.
Another disturbing aspect of this
situation is that several local femi-
nist organizations took Fujimori at
face value when he announced his
family-planning program in 1995,
which he promised would give
women “control over their des-
tinies.” Several groups lavished
praise on Fujimori’s population
policies for “giving women the pos-
sibility of deciding how many chil-
dren to have.” In recent months,
however, feminist groups have
strongly criticized abuses in the
government’s family-planning pro-
gram, and now recognize that the
government is not interested in pro-
moting reproductive choice for
women, but in meeting its strategic
planning goals. It seems at best
ingenuous to have put faith in the
idea that an authoritarian, neoliberal
government like that of Fujimori
would promote population policies
that respected the rights of poor
women. In the meantime, this has
provided ultraconservatives, espe-
cially within the Church, with
ample material to launch a coun-
teroffensive against all types of
family planning that, if left unchal-
lenged, may undermine women’s
rights in Peru for many years to
come.
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