title: Voluntary and involuntary sterilization: denials and abuses of rights.
abstract: Laws that allow competent persons to make free and informed decisions for sterilization serve their entitlements to reproductive choice. Laws that allow others to consent to sterilization of disadvantaged persons who cannot freely consent risk oppression and denial of human rights. Laws that prohibit competent persons' choices for their own sterilization are comparably oppressive and violative of human rights to decide whether and how often to have children. Whether laws approach sterilization as a procedure done for patients, or to patients, is often ambivalent. Details of laws may indicate their liberating and oppressive potential. Programs offering inducements to persons to be sterilized may assist those who are disadvantaged to achieve their goals, but may appear to coerce those who, through poverty or dependency, cannot resist the inducement.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Medicine & Joint Centre for Bioethics, University of Toronto, Canada.
authors.forename: R J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Cook
authors.forename: B M
authors.initials: BM
authors.lastname: Dickens
mesh_terms: D003657:Decision Making; D006233:Persons with Disabilities / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D005260:Female; D006806:Human Rights; D006801:Humans; D007258:Informed Consent; D012067:Religion; D013245:Sterilization, Reproductive / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*