Chile apologizes to woman forcibly sterilized for HIV status
Source: Associated Press
Chile apologizes to woman forcibly sterilized for HIV status
By DANIEL POLITI
May 26, 2022
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Chile’s president publicly apologized to a woman who was sterilized without her consent at a public hospital two decades ago because she was HIV-positive, ending a years-long legal process that included taking her case to the Inter American Commission on Human Rights in Washington.
“It hurts to think that the state that I have the honor of representing today is responsible for these cases,” President Gabriel Boric said Thursday.
The woman has been identified only as Francisca, which is not her real name. She was 20 years old when she became pregnant in 2002 and found out during a routine checkup that she was HIV-positive.
Francisca says she was repeatedly criticized by healthcare workers for getting pregnant while living with HIV and, while she underwent a cesarean, doctors sterilized her without her consent, which the new mother only learned about when she came out of anesthesia.
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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/politics-health-caribbean-chile-argentina-3b531def172fec4da2c8feee32305100