Sterilisation and the Law

Legal Change on Contraceptive Sterilisation

“…To a legally unsophisticated reader of the quite short [OAPA], the argument that the Act prohibits voluntary sterilisation would, I suggest, appear little less than grotesque. 89 The SPT argued that 'no surgical operation is per se unlawful unless Parliament has so decreed, and that the only operation thus designated is abortion'. 90 Making the comparative argument, 91 the SPT pointed out that if the OAPA applied to sterilisation it would also apply to a host of other non-therapeutic medical procedures, including 'cosmetic operations, ear-piercing, ritual circumcision, the removal of a gallbladder from a healthy carrier of typhoid, organ transplantation, or the puncture of the vein of the donor of a blood-transfusion'.…”