TEL AVIV — Following a TV report alleging that Ethiopian Israeli women were being given contraceptive shots against their will, Israel’s Health Ministry has ordered physicians to put a stop to the practice.
It was the first time that an Israeli official has acknowledged that Ethiopian women in Israel have been given the drug.
The report, broadcast Dec. 8 on the “Vacuum” investigative news program on Israeli Educational Television, alleged that Ethiopian immigrants were coerced or coaxed into receiving Depo Provera, a long-term contraceptive shot that lasts three months, both by Jewish aid officials before their immigration to Israel and by health workers once in Israel.
In the past decade, births among Ethiopian women in Israel have fallen by nearly 50%, according to the report.
Last week, the Health Ministry instructed doctors to stop administering the shots unless women ask for them and understand their ramifications.
The ministry’s directive, sent by Director General Ron Gamzu on Jan. 20 in response to a petition filed by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, instructs doctors “not to renew prescriptions of Depo Provera to women of Ethiopian origin or any other women who, for whatever reason, may not understand the treatment’s implications.”
The directive also instructs doctors to ask patients why they want to take the shot before administering it, and to use a translator if necessary.
Read related IJN editorial, "Shocking, reprehensible allegations from Israel about coerced contraception for Ethiopian women"
The directive does not confirm the allegations or acknowledge any wrongdoing.
“We didn’t give the shots,” ministry spokeswoman Einav Shimron Greenbaum told JTA. “We didn’t give them to anyone. We still deny it today.”
THE allegations extend as far back as the health clinics the women visited in Ethiopia prior to immigrating to Israel, where the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee provides an array of health services to prospective Ethiopians immigrants, including contraception.
“They said, ‘Come, there are vaccinations, gather everyone,” Amawaish Alane, an Ethiopian immigrant to Israel, told “Vacuum” reporter Gal Gabbay in the Dec. 8 broadcast.
“We said we wouldn’t receive it. They said, ‘You won’t move to Israel.’”
Alana and others on the program charged that workers at the JDC clinic told them it would be hard for them to work, get apartments or survive in Israel with large families.
A woman identified as S. said on the program that she was told at the Jewish aid compound in Gondar, Ethiopia, that she wouldn’t get a ticket to Israel if she didn’t take the shot.
“I didn’t want to take it. They wanted me to take it. But I didn’t know it was a contraceptive,” she said. “I thought it was an immunization.”
JDC denies the charges.
“At no time did JDC coerce anyone into engaging at family planning at its clinics.
Those options were totally voluntary and offered to women who requested it, a JDC spokesman in New York told JTA in December.
“They chose the form of contraceptive based on being fully informed of all the options available to them.”
The “Vacuum” report alleged that the women continued to be coaxed into receiving the shots once they immigrated to Israel, often without their knowledge that what they were getting was contraception.
A spokesman for ACRI, which filed its petition after the Dec. 8 report aired, said ACRI is interested in preventing future unwanted contraceptive shots rather than casting blame.
“Admission of guilt is not what we’re about,” ACRI spokesman Marc Grey told JTA. “It’s more about acknowledging that this occurred and making sure it doesn’t happen again.”
The project coordinator for women and medical technologies at Isha L’Isha, an Israeli feminist group that also signed the petition, praised the Health Ministry’s Gamzu for issuing the new directive.
“What he’s done is different from all the other statements from the Health Ministry, which blamed the women and said that’s what they want,” said Hedva Eyal, the project coordinator.
“He said maybe we made a mistake. We need to make sure this never happens to any group with any health issue.”
THE American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which runs the health clinics in Ethiopia for prospective immigrants to Israel, said it offers contraception among its array of services, but that it is purely voluntary.
“At no time did JDC coerce anyone into engaging at family planning at its clinics,” a JDC spokesman in New York told JTA in December after the news show aired.
“Those options were totally voluntary and offered to women who requested it. They chose the form of contraceptive based on being fully informed of all the options available to them.”
Dr. Rick Hodes, the medical director of JDC’s operations in Ethiopia, said injectable contraceptives are the option of choice in Ethiopia.
“We do not inform the Israeli authorities who is on family planning, and I have no idea what happens once they arrive in Israel,” Hodes wrote in a letter on the Failed Messiah website that was published Sunday.
“Injectable contraceptives are the most desired throughout the country. They are easy, culturally preferred, and offer the ability to be on birth control without a woman informing her husband, which is an issue here.”