Sterilization Is Genocide

Sterilization is Genocide

Investigations and hearings are in the offing following charges growing since June of widespread sterilization of young Native American women in the US operated Indian Health Service hospital in Claremore, Okla.

According to Dr. Connie Uri, a Native American physician who has been investigating Claremore, there were 132 native women sterilized at Claremore in 1973. One hundred of these sterilizations were non-therapeutic, that is, having the sole purpose of rendering a woman unable to have children permanently.

Dr. Uri insists that the consent forms are written for twelfth grade English majors and that many of the women don't even speak English and don't know what they are signing.

Testimony before the US Senate's Permanent Investigations Subcommittee in September included testimony by Emergy Johnson, director of the Indian Health Service claiming that the IHS "considered non-therapeutic sterilization a legitimate method of family planning. We would be concerned only if these procedures were performed under coercion, or if there was evidence that the operations were carried out without informed voluntary consent."

Even the official report of the Subcommittee confirmed, however, that the hospitals sterilization procedures do "not set forth as clearly as possible the fact that the procedures are irrevocable."