Israel to probe forced birth control claims

The Israeli regime is set to launch a probe into charges that Ethiopian migrant women have been injected with a controversial contraceptive under coercion in Israeli clinics in a move to curb their population growth.

According to a report published by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Thursday, senior health officials appointed a team to look into reports of widespread prescription of Depo-Provera shots to prevent pregnancy in Ethiopian women often without their knowledge or consent.

Thousands of Ethiopian women are said to have been coerced to receive contraceptive shots every three months in Israeli clinics. The move has reportedly amounted to a nearly 50 percent drop in the birthrate among the community.

In December 2012, the suspicions came to light again after a few years when an Israeli documentary linked the fall in the Ethiopian migrant women’s birthrate to the over-prescription of Depo-Provera shots.

The documentary included interviews with 35 Ethiopian immigrant women. Some of them said they had been forced into taking the injections while still in transit camps in Ethiopia and later in Israel.

“They told us that we don’t have to have many births,” said one of the women.

“They said whoever gives birth a lot suffers in life … that it would be difficult for us economically. So we took the shot. We got it every three months. We didn’t want it. We refused and objected. We said we didn’t want to,” she added.

Tamanu-Shata, an activist for the community, also said they were so shocked that Israeli health workers made so many women take the injections without informing them of the possible health ramifications.

“The community is worried and upset over the question whether it’s possible that someone didn’t want Ethiopian children, and whether there was a systematic policy of exploiting the distress of women who were in transit camps en route to Israel,” the activist added.

Depo-Provera shots are most widely prescribed to women who are mentally retarded or institutionalized. It is a way of preventing pregnancy without having to rely on the woman’s own desire or ability to take birth control methods.