Sterilization of Women and Girls with Disabilities

Earlier this month, the Open Society Foundation’s Campaign to Stop Torture in Health Care released a briefing paper titled Sterilization of Women and Girls with Disabilities, bringing attention to how such forced sterilization is commonly justified as being in the person’s “best interest.” It is extremely alarming that this coercive practice remains widely unchallenged, despite numerous international precedents explicitly stating that it violates the rights of disabled people. As the brief notes:

The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has stated that forced sterilization of girls and women with disabilities is a breach of Article 10, protecting the family, of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights … The Committee on the Rights of the Child has identified forced sterilization of girls with disabilities as a form of violence and noted that State parties to the Convention on the Rights of the Child are expected to prohibit by law the forced sterilization of children with disabilities … The United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture has emphasized that forced sterilization of women with disabilities may constitute torture or cruel or inhuman treatment, and that forced sterilization constitutes a crime against humanity when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population. (p.2-3)

Upon reading the brief, I was immediately reminded of the Ashley X treatment a family’s controversial, publicized decision to subject their disabled daughter to several medical procedures- including removing her uterus and breast buds.

Eugenics Culture is NOT Social Justice

I came out as genderqueer during my spring 2011 semester abroad. When I got back to campus, I went to a meeting for a student group which aims to support those who identify as members of the wider transgender community. Like many transgender advocacy groups, one of their focuses is on how transgender individuals are human beings who deserve the same respect and opportunities for their voices to be heard. However, within the first few minutes of the meeting, I felt singled out as someone entitled to neither of these basic recognitions.

When introducing ourselves with a fun fact, one individual chose to state their “cause” was autism awareness, showing pride in a new tattoo of the puzzle piece typically used as its symbol. Yet as an autistic person, this only left me deeply disturbed.  Groups such as Autism Speaks tie the puzzle piece logo to one of their larger goals: finding a way to “cure” us. Our neurobiological differences are seen as something to be erased so that our lives can have the meaning we are assumed to be “missing” by not being neurotypical (meaning non-autistic). The assumption that autistic people are not worthy members of society, that we apparently don’t deserve to exist in the first place, is extremely insulting. I couldn’t help but wonder if the person sitting next to me believed the right to self-determination belonged to neurotypical transgender and gender non-conforming individuals only.

Needless to say, I was upset and disappointed that someone who chose to be involved in a student organization centered on the ideal that all people deserved to be treated as human beings might hold such contradictory values.  Yet, as I thought about the experience, I began to realize it’s actually our society’s eugenics culture that allows such contradictions to remain unrecognized and unchallenged. This culture even manifests itself in so-called progressive causes.