As our report makes clear, Chilean women living with HIV are routinely denied care, verbally abused, given misleading or inaccurate health information, and pressured to agree to sterilization—or sterilized without their consent. Of the sixteen women we interviewed who were sterilized, only four said that they made a fully informed and voluntary choice to have the procedure.
Their testimonies echo that of our client Francisca*, an HIV-positive Chilean woman who was sterilized without her consent during a Cesarean section. The Center and our Chilean partner Vivo Positivo filed a case on behalf of Francisca, F.S. v. Chile, at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in February 2009.
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