"Forced Sterilizations In Peru — Paid For By US Taxpayers"

mises.org

In countries under heavy US influence or occupation, the US government has a habit of pushing political programs that would be too unpopular to implement in the United States.

In Japan, for example, the US occupation after World War II offered an opportunity for American bureaucrats to push abortion policies they couldn't win support for in the United States.

As part of a larger agenda of pushing a Japan-style New Deal and other US-styled interventionist policies, the US occupiers were more than happy to help the new Japanese regime impose a eugenics-friendly program designed to combat alleged overpopulation. According to Holly Coutts:

The centralized government in Japan, coupled with a political culture infused with socialist ideas and traditional loyalty to a strict hierarchy, allowed policymakers to create a far-reaching program. This same type of program was impossible in the US and South Korea [another country under heavy US influence] as it would not have corresponded to their public ideas...

Japan would become the first country to legalize abortion for socioeconomic reasons.

But, at least in these cases, women, for the most part, took part in these programs voluntarily — the aborted children, of course, were not consulted.

But consent on the part of the women apparently doesn't trouble American policymakers when it comes to funding and supporting population-control policies in foreign countries.

Forced Sterilizations in Peru — Paid for by Americans
In recent months, mainstream media outlets have been highlighting the rarely-mentioned forced sterilizations that took place during the Alberto Fujimori years. Part of the renewed interest is due to the fact that Fujimori, who is 79-years-old, and back in prison after a failed attempt at a pardon, now faces charges for his part in the sterilization program. The program is said to have lead to the forced sterilization of over 200,000 women in the late 1990s.

Like many programs aimed at reducing fertility and population growth, the program was largely aimed at lower-income women and members of indigenous populations living in the Peruvian highlands.

And, as with so many government coups and policies of questionable morality found in Latin America, we find the hand of the US government. The National Catholic Register reported on Tuesday that the US Agency for International Development — the US's primary foreign "aid" agency — had essentially taken control of the Peruvian national health system during the period of the sterilizations:

An unsettling aspect of the entire Peruvian campaign is the involvement of the U.S. government. The specific agencies that were involved in Peru’s sterilization campaign were the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the NIPPON Foundation (a Japanese nonprofit). It is known that UNFPA donated $10 million for the forced-sterilization campaign.