On May 26, the President of Chile Gabriel Boric publicly apologized to Francisca, a Chilean woman with HIV who was sterilized without her consent in 2002 while giving birth. Soon after becoming pregnant, Francisca had tested positive for HIV, then prompting her to take antiretroviral treatment in hopes of not transmitting the virus to her baby. She was unknowingly sterilized while under anesthesia for a Cesarean section, even though she never requested or consented to it, either in writing or verbally, as mandated by law since 2000. After a decade of legal battles against the state of Chile, in August 2021, the Center for Reproductive Rights and Chilean HIV/AIDS service group Vivo Positivo won big, for “the government of Chile agreed to end forced sterilization, provide Francisca with reparations, and reform its policies to address discrimination against people living with HIV,” as described by the Center. Furthermore, this victory sits as a model of one’s sacred right to health, personal liberty and security and life without gender-based violence.
Read the complete report in the Center for Reproductive Rights’ news page within the Latin American & Caribbean Program entitled, President of Chile Issues Public Apology to Woman who was Sterilized Without Her Consent in Landmark Case at the IACHR (May 27, 2022).
I also recommend reading the excerpt below from a Center for Reproductive Rights hearing before the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women on Sept. 17, 2012 in order to better understand the deep-rooted history of legal struggles against the Chilean government as rights-groups aimed to expand the agency of Chileans living with HIV/AIDS who chose to have children. Within the letter they wrote to the UN Committee, it is evident that the Center was trying to rally international support against Chile’s draconian sterilization policies and demand the country move towards a system of consent.
Recognizing that its international legal obligations required informed consent, Chile revised its law governing sterilization in 2000. The new law states that “[t]he decision to undergo sterilization is personal” and mandates that it should be provided through written consent as well as that health care providers offer counseling on alternative forms of contraception, the irreversible nature of sterilization and the potential risks involved before obtaining a patient’s written informed consent for the procedure. Voluntary, informed consent must be obtained in writing prior to the sterilization. Despite the revision of the law, forced and coerced sterilization of women living with HIV/AIDS continue to occur in Chile.
Prior to 2000, the law governing surgical sterilization codified medical practitioners’ ability to make decisions on their patients’ behalf in “serious cases,” in addition to restricting surgical sterilization to specific medical issues and requiring spousal consent. Although HIV/AIDS was not explicitly included among the medical indications for sterilization, medical practitioners routinely read the “other medical causes” provision to include HIV/AIDS, and used this provision to justify involuntary sterilization of women living with HIV. Involuntary sterilization can take the form of coerced or forced sterilization. Coerced sterilization occurs when the individual does not provide free and informed consent prior to the sterilization. It may result from the use of intimidation tactics, misinformation, directive counseling or financial or other incentives which compel a person to undergo sterilization. The conditioning of health services on consent to sterilization is another form of coercion. Sterilization is considered forced when a person is sterilized without his or her knowledge or is not given an opportunity to provide consent. Due to sterilization’s permanent nature, it is critical that women provide informed consent prior to the procedure.
Read the complete letter here.
PS
I read with interest this article on Neo.Life: 
We have seen so many screaming girls. Every time we see them, we’re like, They’re screaming. And that’s it. Yet the screaming fan doesn’t scream for nothing, and screaming isn’t all the fan is doing. It never has been.
Her work particularly indicts the dehumanization of Black women in America, instead uplifting Black agency, Black beauty, Black motherhood, and Black re-imaginings of the Western art canon. Through her adamant art and activist practice, she began to topple the hierarchies of exclusionary art movements, particularly through her trademark quilting acting as a rich form of resistance to “conventional” craft and existing as a symbol of inherited inter-generational tradition, and therefore intergenerational storytelling and protest. 
Why is menstruation so often considered a dirty phenomenon, in both material and symbolic terms? How do ideas and realities of menstrual pollution affect the lived experience of menstruation and everyday hygiene practices?
The messaging that young people receive regarding menstruation is complex and contradictory. Persistent, self-perpetuating stigma and the barriers to menstrual equity associated with it has historically led to a loss of dignity and autonomy for girls, women, and all who menstruate. Lack of access to period products caused by period poverty or embarrassment and shame combine to deny opportunities to menstruators. Perhaps the most critical arena in which to make progress for menstrual equity is our schools, where negative stereotypes myths are propagated, and this manifests in absences and under-performance in class. The second most critical arena, I think, is the media young people view. 
This summer, the Feminist Law Professors blog is pleased to welcome our first-ever undergraduate student co-blogger as part of the 
This study is undertaken to examine the connections between child marriage and menstrual discrimination in policies and practices at national, regional and global levels. The four specific objectives are: i) to explore menstrual discrimination in countries that have high numbers of child marriages, ii) to examine the national policies and legal interventions against child marriage and menstrual discrimination, iii) to examine the networks advocating against child marriage with regards to menstrual discrimination, and iv) to assess the global policies and declarations against menstrual discrimination and child marriage. A qualitative approach with secondary resources reviews the issues in Bangladesh, India and Niger, countries which have the highest rate of child marriage. As well as the regional and global networks which are working to end child marriage, namely South Asia Initiative to End Violence, the African Union and Girls not Brides. Likewise, the study reviews the major international human rights instruments such as Human Rights Declaration 1948, Convention of Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Girls and Women 1979, Convention of Child Rights 1989 and Sustainable Developmental Goals 2016-2030. The worldwide scope and impact of discriminatory menstrual practices have been omitted from the policies, plans and activities of governments, international organizations and NGOs. Because menstrual discrimination has been used as justification to disempower women in the power structure and patriarchies, women have been left without a voice to negotiate their human rights, education, and socio-economic opportunities. Menstrual discrimination should be openly included in the discussion of the real drivers of early or child marriage.
The FIU Law Review has published (
On May 28, 2022, Menstrual Hygiene Day, the Open Library of Humanities will publish a new open-access volume, 
Tony Infanti is the foremost American scholar of U.S. tax law and policy’s multiple intersections with LGBT taxpayers. Chapter 2 of the book, Time Travel Avoided (or, Justice Denied), explores how the IRS seemingly failed to apply its own rules of construction when it came to recognizing rights of same-sex couples in the pre-Windsor era, and the tax law’s ongoing and stubbornly persistent preferences for “married” taxpayers. The Chapter also looks at the ways the IRS struggled with issues of tax exemptions for racially segregated school in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. At least in the early days, the IRS “chose not to apply substance-over-form principles in an apparent effort to disturb existing power structures in US society as little as possible.” (p. 88)
Oklahoma City University School of Law will host the Third Biennial Conference on Critical Trusts and Estates April 8-9, 2022 in Oklahoma City. The conference provides a forum for a wide range of work dealing with connections between succession law, broadly defined, and systemic inequality. We invite submissions of proposals for both individual papers and panels from any of a wide range of perspectives – historical, empirical, doctrinal, textual, theoretical and practical. We especially welcome submissions from junior scholars and those who have not attended in the past. Please send 200-300 word proposals to Phyllis Burke, at 
