The Sterilisation of Women with Learning Disabilities - Some Points for Consideration

The sterilisation of people with learning disabilities was a procedure that took place with disturbing frequency during the first four decades of the 20th century (Park and Radford, 1998). This was largely associated with the Eugenics movement, in the mistaken belief that eliminating the opportunities of people with learning disabilities to reproduce would eliminate the incidence of learning disability in the general population. Indeed, as late as 1976 in Sweden, the practice continued, as the behaviour of women with learning disabilities was regarded as “unacceptable” (Denekens et al., 1999). In Germany by 1937, an estimated 225,000 people with mental illness or learning disability had been sterilised (Spann, 1975). Increased research into learning disabilities undermined the false belief that all forms of learning disability were heritable. This new understanding, in combination with movements such as “normalisation” (Wolfensberger, 1972) and The Human Rights Act (1998) has confirmed the rights of people with learning disability to refuse sterilisation procedures. However, this refusal still relies upon the assessed capacity of someone with a learning disability to consent. This paper argues that consent to sterilisation should be viewed individually, with specific parameters to consider, but within the context of the standard capacity to consent literature. It is important that a more individualised procedure for assessing consent to sterilisation is developed and a model for such is proposed. The reason for this individualised approach is due to The British Journal of Developmental Disabilities Vol. 50, Part 2, JULY 2004, No. 99, pp. 133-141