Chile can apologize to a sterilized woman for being HIV positive

Country Chile Thursday (26) made a public apology to a woman who was sterilized without her consent, after giving birth in a public hospital, for being infected with HIV.

The woman is known as Francesca (her true identity remains confidential). She gave birth in 2002, at the age of twenty, in a public hospital in the city of Kuriko, she was already diagnosed with HIV. During the caesarean section, doctors sterilized her without her consent.

“To begin by apologizing to Francesca for the serious violation of her rights and also for the denial of justice and all the time you had to wait for it,” said the association’s president. Chilethe leftist Gabriel Borek, as a representative of the state, at the public act of recognition of international responsibility held at the Presidential Palace of La Moneda.

“How many people like you do we not know?” asked the president.

The Center for Reproductive Rights and Vivo Positivo brought Francesca’s case, who was not present during the reparations procedure, to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2009, after the state had not allowed her access to justice or compensation. to her complaint.

In 2021, a Chile She signed the Peace Settlement Agreement, under which she assumed her international responsibility for the human rights violation that occurred in this case.

Carmen Martinez, of the American Center for Reproductive Rights, read a message from Francesca during the event: “We, people living with HIV, continue to look down on us. I want to believe with conviction that this will change, that mistakes will not return to the past, and will not be made Sterilize any woman without her consent.