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Israel Admits Giving Ethiopian Jew Immigrants Birth Control Injections without Consent
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| Contributor | Jason |
| Last Edited | Jason May 25, 2013 02:00am |
| Category | News |
| News Date | Jan 27, 2013 02:00am |
| Description | After years of denial, the Israeli government has admitted to injecting unwitting Ethiopian Jewish women who immigrate to Israel with a potentially dangerous birth control drug.
Haaretz reports that the Israeli Health Ministry, which had previously denied the highly unethical practice, has now ordered gynecologists to stop administering the injections of the long-acting contraceptive drug Depo-Provera. A letter from the Israeli Ministry of Health to medical officials administering the contraceptive injections ordered doctors “not to renew prescriptions for Depo-Provera for women of Ethiopian origin if for any reason there is concern that they might not understand the ramifications of the treatment.”
Some of those ramifications include serious side effects, such as infertility and bone loss, that can be caused by taking Depo-Provera. The drug, which is manufactured by the American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, was the subject of a 2004 FDA ‘black box’ warning. According to one Israeli doctor, at least 10 percent of women who receive Depo-Provera injections develop side effects.
Suspicions surrounding the Israeli practice of giving contraceptive injections to Ethiopian women were first raised five years ago. More recently, investigative journalist Gal Gabbay interviewed more than 30 women from Ethiopia in an attempt to determine why birth rates among Ethiopian Jews who immigrated to Israel were uncharacteristically low. According to Gabbay, birth rates among those women had plummeted by nearly 50 percent over the past decade. |
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