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.
