Another woman named Stepanka described her experience: "I have three daughters. The youngest was born in 1982, the birth went well. ["] I came home, right! And after five days, there comes a nurse, and says that I've had a bad blood and will have to go back to the hospital again, also with my daughter. I had no idea what she was talking about. I thought you need to be healthy, when they let you out of the hospital, but I went there again ["] That's when they did the sterilization to me. I was 23 and we really wanted to have a boy also in our family."
Elena Gorolova told Al Jazeera News of the coercive methods used by Slovakian physicians to sterilize her. "My first child was delivered by C-section," she said. "I was in pain. I was in such a state that I didn't know what I was signing. The doctor told me that by sterilizing me, he had saved my life."
Another Romani woman, Natasa Botosova, recounted, "The nurse handed me a blank paper to sign on. I just did what she asked because I was in a lot of pain. I only found out what had happened because afterwards there was a scar on my abdomen."
And on it goes. These are just some of the women who were misinformed, lied to, or simply not told they were undergoing sterilization. These procedures occurred at a time when they were physically and emotionally vulnerable, relying on doctors to care for them, to be truthful, to perform only those surgical procedures necessary for their health. In each instance, they were denied those fundamental rights.
The ERRC is helping give voice to these women by filing lawsuits, seeking compensation, and advocating policy changes. Governments are responding, slowly acknowledging the wrongs and making redress. But the sense of shame these women carry at being treated so cruelly, so inhumanely, are wounds a lawsuit cannot remove. The insidious nature of discrimination is the enduring psychic trauma left on the victims. A Romani proverb says, "Bury me on my feet, I have spent my entire life on my knees." For a people who seem to have no end to their troubles at the hands of others, this proverb is, sadly, all too easy to understand.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
