By Cristina Sánchez Reyes | Mexico City (EFE).- The Mexican Angélica Juárez, a victim of obstetric violence and forced contraception, has been waiting three years for reparation for the damage and a public apology from a hospital in Mexico City, seeking a precedent for women in the country and that these cases stop happening.
“I want what happened to me not to happen to other women and not to happen to other babies because the consequences can really be terrible,” Juárez says in an interview with EFE.
The woman, an inhabitant of one of the 15 native towns of Iztapalapa, eastern demarcation of the Mexican capital, details that during and after her pregnancy she experienced various forms of obstetric violence, mainly due to her condition of poverty, coupled with her indigenous origin.
Contraception against your will
Angélica reports that on August 11, 2020, when she was 38 weeks pregnant, she went for a consultation at the Emiliano Zapata Community Hospital of the Ministry of Health (Sedesa) in Mexico City but, as she had preeclampsia -high blood pressure- she was hospitalized urgently. for a caesarean section.
From that moment, she explains, the agency staff asked her what contraceptive method she would use after the delivery, to which she replied that she did not want any, so they gave her a document to sign that she took responsibility for her decision.
Despite this, he accuses, the medical staff gave him a contraceptive method without respecting his wish.
“I had an IUD (intrauterine device) inserted without my consent,” he explained.
Juárez acknowledges that he did not realize what had happened until days later, when he suffered pangs in the uterus and hemorrhages, for which he went to the health center where they informed him that on his discharge sheet it said that he had a contraceptive implant.
The news surprised him and he asked the doctor to look for the implant, but found nothing until he had an X-ray examination.
“I got scared, I said: do I have an implant? Do I have an IUD? I have both? What happened? What did they do to my body? Nothing else that? Did they put something else and why did they do it? In other words, they made me feel invalidated, abused and as if invaded ”, she recalls.
Obstetric violence, common in Mexico
Obstetric violence is common in Mexico and, according to the Grupo de Información en Reproducción Elegida (GIRE), includes “any action or omission by public or private health personnel towards women during pregnancy, childbirth or puerperium”
According to the National Survey of Dynamics and Relationships in Homes 2021, in the last 5 years, 33.4% of Mexican women between the ages of 15 and 49 who had a baby suffered some form of abuse from those who attended them during childbirth.
Angélica remembers that when she returned home she decided to sue the hospital for obstetric violence because, in addition, during her stay she could not feed her baby because she had no milk and the staff did not want to give her formula.
“I asked (the head nurse) if she could give the baby formula because she had barely eaten for almost 24 hours, because I barely had a few drops of colostrum and she told me: ‘see if they are going to be bad mothers, it’s better not to have children’”, she affirms.
An apology that does not arrive
Angélica obtained an amparo in 2021 in which for the first time “it is legally recognized that forced contraception exists, that it is a violation of human rights and that therefore there must be comprehensive reparation for the damage,” she points out.
The judge ordered the Commission for Attention to Victims a plan to repair the damage that included four measures: economic compensation, a training plan for hospital personnel, psychological treatment, and a public apology that it must approve, and that it must given before April 30.
“June 9 should have been the event after they had already been postponing it and on Thursday night they call me on the phone and say: ‘You know what? The apology is canceled and we don’t have a date for when we do it,’” she laments.
He assures that the authorities want him to give up the apology, but he will not do so because of the importance of the precedent.
“It’s what I want. Let women know from today that if it happens to them they can sue, they can raise their voices like I am doing. It’s not easy, it’s revictimizing,” she says.
“But I want to think that if it doesn’t happen to a woman in this city anymore, thanks to this, I already consider myself well served,” she concludes.