No one administering the drug had asked if Beatriz was pregnant or warned her about possible side effects. Health officials later informed her that she was too stupid to continue on a program of monthly injections of Depo-Provera, she says, and that if she refused other forms of birth control she would be sterilized. According to reports by U.S. human-rights investigators, Beatriz is one of a number of women in Peru who have been coerced by the Peruvian health ministry into accepting birth control against their will. And Americans paid for it.
Federal law forbids the use of U.S. funds for family-planning programs that are coercive.
All this comes at a time when Peru s president, Alberto Fujimori, is running for reelection under close international scrutiny because of alleged election fraud, restriction of press freedom and a general iron-fisted approach to government. Forced sterilization is part of that record. Peru s constitution states that life begins at conception, but in 1995 Fujimori lifted the long-standing legal ban on sterilization for reasons other than medical necessity. Sterilization campaigns began. Rep. Todd Tiahrt, a Republican from Kansas, is author of the so-called Tiahrt amendment, which prohibits U.S. funds from being used for coercive family planning abroad.