Mexico City Proposes Chemical Castration of Rapists
 La Opinión
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November 29, 2010
Mexico City - Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) is proposing this week in the capital's legislative assembly for an initiative known as "chemical castration" to address sexual assault in Mexico City. A shot in the arm with a female hormone decreases testosterone, libido and blood supply to the genitals, and is reportedly 95 percent effective.
The proposal's main sponsor, 34-year-old Israel Betanzos, said he was tired of seeing sex offenders get light sentences, only to return to the streets and attack other victims. An average of seven rapes take place each day in Mexico City, 30 percent of them on the street, reports La Opinión. The situation in the rest of the country doesn't look much better: the National Human Rights Commission documents 120,000 rapes annually.
Betanzos suggests that the birth control drug Depo Provera be used on sex offenders to shift hormone levels, although side effects of the drug could spark debate in the legislature, where the majority of representatives are from the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD). Possible symptoms include impotence, low sperm levels, nausea, and loss of body and facial hair.
PRD Congressman David Razú, who is president of Congress's local Human Rights Commission, said he would not allow the proposal to pass, saying, "We are not in the Middle Ages."
Betanzos argues that so-called "chemical castration" has decreased sex offenders' recidivism rates from 70 percent to 2 percent in countries including Germany, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Poland, France, and Australia, and in the U.S. states of Georgia, Iowa, Oregon, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Montana, Texas, Wisconsin and Florida.
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