Statement on irreversible sterilisation

Creation: Central Commission of Deontology of the Spanish Medical Association.
sourceSpanish: Comisión Central de Deontología de la Organización Médica Colegial Española.
language Original: Spanish.
Approval: General Assembly of December 15, 1984.
Publication: Informativo Médico 82, January 1985.
Copyright: No.
Checked on May 14, 2002.

Statement of the WTO Central Commission of Deontology on irreversible sterilization.

1. Although the internship of voluntary sterilization, that is, sterilization performed without medical indication and by the sole decision of the person requesting it, has been decriminalized, it is still a serious mutilation, which depreciates the biological quality and staff of the person who undergoes it. Consequently, voluntary sterilization must be considered a condemnable act from an ethical point of view, and its performance must be discouraged by all physicians, regardless of the modality of their professional internship .

2. The article 115 of the Code of Medical Ethics establishes the circumstances in which therapeutic sterilization may be permitted. These are always medical indications that must be established with very restrictive criteria and for reasons proportionate to the seriousness and irreversibility of the results.

3. The advice or recommendations of the Deontology Commissions are purely indicative. The physician will know how to evaluate as a valuable element of judgment the qualified opinion offered by the Deontology Commission of high school, but is always obliged to follow the opinion of his science and conscience, retaining in all circumstances, along with his freedom to prescribe, his responsibility staff.

4. The committee General Medical Association assumes the protection of the freedom of prescription of the physician who acts according to ethical norms and with responsibility staff.

a) A physician who, contrary to the opinion of other colleagues or of the directors of the institution in which he/she works, refuses to perform a sterilizing operation which, in his/her opinion, is not indicated, may never be disturbed or harmed.

b) It considers as decidedly contrary to medical ethics those calls to fill positions for doctors in hospitals, public or private, that impose, among the requirements to opt for the place, the obligation to perform sterilizing operations or to collaborate in them, as this would be tantamount to an intolerable mortgage of the doctor's freedom of decision.

5. As long as Hospital Deontological Commissions are constituted and regulated by the Collegiate Medical Organization to assess the performance of irreversible sterilizations for health reasons, the Deontological Commission of high school should be heard in all cases, in order to unify the ethical-medical criteria on these issues.