Women Around the World are Being Butchered
Much has been made of the female health gap in the pages of Western media. Authors often cite the abnormally high Cesarean rate in the US, the higher prevalence of black maternal deaths in comparison to other racial groups, and the plight of breast and cervical cancer. While these concerns are real, a lesser known barbarism is taking place worldwide that deserves the feminist’s movement’s attention. That is the routine and often unnecessary use of hysterectomies.
In developing countries that comprise the backbone of consumer economies worldwide, forced sterilization measures are often proffered — or even demanded in the case of China — to ensure that women can keep working free of the inconveniences of periods, pregnancy, and childbirth. In addition, compulsory birth control use and sterilization can have a dual “benefit” of slowly getting rid of undesirable ethnic minorities who breed too much for an authoritarian regime’s liking.
In the western Xinjiang region of China, the Muslim minority group in the region known as the Uyghurs have faced a pogrom complete with forced “re-education” and work programs. The Chinese authorities state that their efforts are meant to root out terrorism and ensure Uyghur assimilation into the country’s dominant Han identity. In contrast, Uyghur families report forced marriages to Han men, stints in internment camps complete with torture, forced abortion, and rape, and many more unspeakable horrors.
The Chinese Communist Party’s use of birth control shots, unwanted intrauterine devices, abortions, and forced sterilization after three children slashed the birth rate in the Uyghur population by 24% in 2019 alone. It has also allowed the CCP to use women’s bodies to continue the arduous work of harvesting cotton and other goods destined for export. Xu Guixiang, the one-time deputy spokesperson for Xinjiang’s regional government, denied that there was mandatory sterilization in the region, instead claiming that all ethnicities freely choose “safe, effective, and appropriate birth control measures.” Appropriate to slowly kill the “religious virus” (their words, not mine) lingering in the loins of these minority women, perhaps.
In India, hysterectomies are used to ensure women can work harder and for longer in sugar plantations that supply raw materials to brands such as Coca Cola and Pepsi. UK researchers revealed and A New York Times investigation confirmed that young women are undergoing “voluntary” hysterectomies so they can maintain the flow of their wages.
In an ouroboros-type situation, grueling 12 to 16-hour days cause the women severe stress, thus exacerbating menstrual symptoms that necessitate breaks, thus requiring the women to work more hours. The women hope that by removing their uteruses, they will cut down on their discomfort, doctor’s visits, and the need for pads and a running toilet. Instead, post-operation, they are faced with menopause symptoms in their twenties: osteoporosis, mental health struggles, joint pain. This status quo has continued for years.
Even in the United States, wayward hysterectomies and unwanted abortions are not unheard of. For example, migrants crossing the Mexican border are often given misoprostol and mifepristone pills to induce abortion, sometimes without an explanation of how the drugs function and for what end.
While some women’s rights organizations state that they offer these drugs to undocumented migrants out of compassion, they often do not consider that these women may be sexual assault victims, and by providing the pills, they are exonerating the perpetrator of their actions. Plus, danger does not stop at the southern border. In 2020, some migrant women reported that they faced hysterectomies at the hands of an Immigrations & Customs Enforcement doctor in what appears to be simple eugenics.
Within the United States, hysterectomies and ovary removals are all too common and lead to extremely poor health outcomes for many women affected by the surgeries. It goes without saying that it would be considered barbaric to surgically remove the testicles of a man suffering from hormonal-induced symptoms. Testicle removal is only reserved for the most dire of cases — usually cancer — and men (rightfully) will not consider undergoing the procedure if there is any other way to alleviate their suffering. Doctors state that hysterectomies and oophorectomies should similarly be reserved for women with genuine cancer risks.
Because so many Western women are using hormonal birth control and enjoying its accompanying freedom from the shackles of menstruation, they often fail to see that forced birth control use can be abhorrent. The widespread malaise on the part of doctors in the West who are profoundly un-curious about women’s health compounds this issue. Every woman can list a time where her concerns about her fatigue, painful or absent periods, or disturbing pregnancy symptoms were hand-waved away as just another part of the female experience.
This diminishment of female concerns can lead straight to hormonal birth control use, in-vitro fertilization, lifetime thyroid medication use, or a hysterectomy as a band-aid for a problem that could have been solved through medical and nutritional interventions. Scientific evidence should translate into better clinical practice, and at a faster rate; it is not an overstatement to claim that women’s lives are at stake. In addition, we cannot ignore our sisters worldwide who are giving up the organs that define their femininity so that they can be automatons in a system that feeds our consumerist Machine.
It is a very great weakness of the feminist cause that it doesn't fight harder for other women suffering these abuses in other parts of the world. I wonder if this is partly because western feminists are very ambivalent about childbirth and babies.