President Gabriel Boric at the act of public acknowledgment of responsibility of the Chilean State in the case of Francisca, in La Moneda. Center for Reproductive Rights
Shortly after becoming pregnant, Francisca, 20, married, tested positive for HIV.
The poor woman began antiretroviral treatment, terrified of transmitting the virus to the baby on the way.
She broke her waters on November 4, 2002 at the public hospital in Curicó, 200 kilometers south of Santiago.
While she was waiting for a cesarean section to be performed, the medical staff on duty accused her of being irresponsible for having a child in her condition.
The child was born healthy, but when Francisca woke up, a nurse informed her that she had been sterilized.
She never requested the surgical procedure, nor did she give her consent in writing or verbally, as required by law since 2000. This Thursday, 22 years after what happened,
Francisca is not called that.
It is the name she adopted when the lengthy court battle for her case began.
She for a long time thought that what had happened to her was normal.
Raised in a rural area, without sexual education, and immersed in a culture full of prejudice towards people with HIV, she did not realize that she was a victim until the Vive Positivo Foundation, dedicated to providing information and accompanying people with HIV, he approached her and instructed her, as she recounted in an episode of
Radio Ambulante
.
Legally advised, Francisca filed a complaint in 2007 against the doctor who treated her.
At trial, the doctor said that the patient had given him verbal consent to perform a sterilization.
Most of the nurses supported this version and the judge ruled against Francisca.
The lawyer Catalina Martinez, regional director of the Center for Reproductive Rights, explains by phone that, since they could not find justice in the Chilean courts, they filed in 2009, together with Vive Positivo, a complaint against the Chilean State before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), alleging the violation of rights of the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights: personal integrity, judicial guarantees, protection of honor and dignity, among others.
In 2014 the commission declared it admissible.
”Since the Chilean State decided in 2016 to start a Friendly Settlement Agreement process, we have worked hard to guarantee the reparation of the damages against Francisca and measures that would allow us to address the structural situation of violence against women and people with HIV” Martinez details.
Finally, they reached an agreement signed on August 3, 2021. The text of international commitments establishes, among other measures, financial compensation for the victim -the amount of which has not been made public-, access to a housing subsidy, student benefits and comprehensive health care.
It also obliges the State to commit to training health and justice service personnel on female and male sterilization,
The agreement included an act of public acknowledgment of the responsibilities of the Chilean State in the case, held this Thursday.
To protect her identity, Francisca participated via streaming in the event, where several government authorities were present, including the Ministers of the Interior, Izkia Siches, and Foreign Affairs, Antonia Urrejola.
“I would love to have been me, with my voice, my face, and my body, the one who, after so many years of struggle, was present to lead this act on my own behalf.
However, revealing my identity would have closed countless doors for me.
To this day, people with HIV continue to be looked down upon, as if we had chosen them.
I want to think that this will change.
That no woman shall be sterilized without her consent”,
President Gabriel Boric began his speech asking Francisca for forgiveness for the "serious violation and violation" of her rights and also for the "denial of justice and for all the time" she had to wait.
“It hurts to think that the State, which today I have the honor to represent, is responsible for these cases.
I promise before you [Francisca] that, as long as we govern, we will give the best of each one so that something of these characteristics never happens again and, by the way, so that in the cases in which they have already been committed these atrocities are repaired accordingly”.
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