It’s hard to believe, but in Israel, in 2012, Ethiopian women are forced to receive injections of the Depo-Provera contraceptive. This injection is not a commonly prescribed means of contraception. It is considered a last resort and is usually given to women who are institutionalized or developmentally disabled. Yet according to an investigation recently aired on the “Vacuum” documentary series hosted by Gal Gabay and shown on Israeli Educational Television, it is also given to many new immigrants from Ethiopia.
This is not the first or only case where the state has interfered in the lives of people who have limited means of resistance. And as in other cases, the system that carried out this policy is extremely sophisticated, so it is hard to find a specific person who is responsible or a signed and written order. But the televised investigation, conducted with researcher Sava Reuven, found that more than 40 women have received the shot.
Depo-Provera has a shameful history. According to a report by the Isha L’Isha organization, the injections were given to women between 1967 and 1978 as part of an experiment that took place in the U.S. state of Georgia on 13,000 impoverished women, half of whom were black. Many of them were unaware that the injections were part of an experiment being conducted on their bodies. Some of the women became sick and a few even died during the experiment.
There are many examples across the world of efforts to reduce birthrates among disadvantaged populations that lack the resources and the capability to resist. During the 1960s, the U.S. was concerned by the increase of the population in Puerto Rico. In 1965, it was reported that 34 percent of Puerto Rican mothers aged 20 to 49 had been sterilized. (Efrat Yardai) More here.
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this article mentions radiation that was administered until the 60s as a way to prevent ringworm in jewish immigrants from arab countries. here is more info on that:
The government radiation campaign began in the late 1940s, when a fear arose in the country of an outbreak of a plague of ringworm, a skin disease that grows in the roots of the hair and quickly spreads among children who live in crowded conditions, with poor hygiene. The prejudices of the establishment toward the Mizrahi (Jews of North African and Middle Eastern origin) immigrants contributed both to intensifying this fear and to the means used to solve the problem.
The top echelons of the Ministry of Health and the Medical Corps of the Israel Defense Forces decided to begin a comprehensive treatment and prevention campaign, which was to include radioactive treatments of the heads of all the children up to age 15 who had immigrated from Arab countries. In all, about 100,000 children underwent these treatments.
At a certain stage of the campaign, which lasted until 1960, it was also decided to transfer radiation machines to the Jewish Agency transit camps in Marseilles and other places in Europe and to carry out the treatments there, while the children were still in transit from North Africa to Israel. The medical world at the time, even outside Israel, was as yet unaware of the future damage involved in these radiation treatments; the connection between such treatments and cancer and other illnesses was discovered only years later.
Many people have testified that the radiation campaign caused the children serious emotional harm. Without any explanation, they were brought to clinics where the hair on their heads was shaven, the hair that remained was pulled out with hot wax, and the roots were eliminated with x-rays.
The exact number of Israelis who have suffered from various types of cancer because of radiation against ringworm is not known. However, Prof. Baruch Modan, who researched the subject when he was the head of the Department of Clinical Epidemiology at the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer, discovered over 30 years ago that their number was more than double that in the general population. The treatments caused many other illnesses: sterility, the loss of teeth and hair, and severe and ugly scars on the scalp and on other parts of the body. According to the most recent estimates, tens of thousands of people contracted cancer or other illnesses as a result of the radiation campaign. More here.