For minors, in any event, most decisions are made by parents under pressure, who may fear legal complications or hardships if grandchildren should be thrust into their care. Parents not only erroneously think they would get retarded grandchildren, he says, but often act in the belief that sterilization would somehow protect the retarded from rape. Sexual abuse still goes on, but without the consequences. Haidlmayr thinks much more is needed. The issue is the portrayal and status of the handicapped in our society.
Handicapped people continue to be marginalized, pushed away and robbed of their rights.
Belgium also has a program allowing sterilization of the mentally retarded, but with far stricter guidelines. For their part, the former Czechoslovakia's policies that seemed to target Gypsy women in particular, and especially in Slovakia, may have been carried out by the book but appeared to be aimed disproportionately at stemming growth of the Romany population. The Czech Republic's Ministry of Health is launching an investigation of the practice, based on reports by human-rights monitors like Helsinki Watch and others. Critics argue that social workers pressured a significant number of Romany women into undergoing sterilization in exchange for rewards, or by threatening to cut off welfare benefits. Charges of ethnic targeting have also come to haunt Canada's two westernmost provinces, Alberta and British Columbia, which had sterilization programs up to the early 1970s.