Sterilization of those with intellectual disability: Evolution from non-consensual interventions to strict safeguards.

Abstract

Non-consensual sterilisation is one of the characteristic historical abuses that took place mainly in the first half of the 20th-century. People with intellectual disability were a prime target as part of the ideology of negative eugenics. In certain jurisdictions, laws were in force for several decades that permitted sterilisation without the need for consent, or with consent from third parties. The long-term adverse effects on those sterilised against their will have only more recently been recognised. In the latter half of the 20th-century, human rights treaties were introduced and developed; they have in the main curbed sterilisation abuses. Courts have developed more stringent criteria for making decisions on applications for sterilisation and nowadays there are mostly adequate safeguards in place to protect those with intellectual disability from non-consensual sterilisation, except when it is overwhelmingly the right decision for an individual, taking into account all the medical and social factors of a particular case.