Compulsory sterilization , also known as forced or coerced sterilization , is a government-mandated program to sterilize a specific group of people. Several countries implemented sterilization programs in the early 20th century.
Rationalizations for compulsory sterilization include: population size control, gender discrimination, limiting the spread of HIV, [2] "gender-normalizing" surgeries for intersex people, and ethnic genocide according to the Statute of Rome.
In some countries, transgender individuals are required to undergo sterilization before gaining legal recognition of their gender , a practice that the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment has described as a violation of the Yogyakarta Principles. Governmental family planning programs emerged in the late nineteenth century and have continued to progress through the twenty-first century.
During this time, feminists began advocating for reproductive choice, but eugenicists and hygienists were advocating for low income and disabled peoples to be sterilized or have their fertility tightly regulated in order to clean or perfect nations. Any type of birth control can count as a method of population control if once administered women have no control over its use.
Much of these governmental population control programs were focused on using sterilization as the main avenue to reduce high birth rates, even though public acknowledgement that sterilization made an impact on the population levels of the developing world is still widely lacking.
