[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 34 (Tuesday, March 24, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H1386]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      THE OVRETTE PROGRAM IN HONDURAS: A VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

  (Mr. PITTS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to share another tragic story of 
human rights violations abroad, this time in the country of Honduras.
  For more than 34 years and with millions of dollars, women of 
Honduras have been victims of an overzealous population control 
movement. They have been subjected to sterilizations and mass 
contraceptive pill distribution without caution or required exams or 
information, funded entirely by U.S. taxpayers.
  Mr. Speaker, now we find that these Honduran women have been the 
subjects of a human experiment, this time with the Ovrette 
contraceptive pill, which has been used without any information about 
its potential side effects to the women taking the pill.
  Instead of warning women that the effects of the pill were 
undetermined and that it should not be taken while breast-feeding, the 
USAID-led effort chose to strongly push the use of the pill among the 
women. At the same time, the government decided to monitor unsuspecting 
women to see what the effects of Ovrette might be.
  To make matters worse, while this was going on, Ovrette was not even 
registered with the proper authorities, as is the law.
  Mr. Speaker, this would not take place in America. It should stop in 
Honduras.

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