The medical mutilation of women's rights

When a woman goes into a hospital to have a baby, and is told that unless she agrees to being sterilised the doctors will not assist her, what should she do? Or when she goes in and is asked to sign a form for a Caesarean and comes out womb-less and confused what recourse does she have? This is not some post-apocalyptic threat. This is reality, and is happening in at least four of SA’s nine provinces and more frequently in our next-door neighbour Namibia.

To increase the abhorrence of this act, the women who are most often victims to this medical mutilation of their right to dignity and choice are HIV-positive women — a group already vulnerable to stigma, state sluggishness to support them and sickness. This is a form of gender-based violence because it is quite clear that nobody is encouraging the men impregnating the women to be sterilised. After all, women do not become pregnant from sitting on warm toilet seats.

Women’s bodies have been regulated in many ways throughout history and many times this regulation has been medical. Many times medical revolutions have been progressive for women’s freedom (contraceptives and Caesareans for example) and have been welcomed by feminists and non-feminists alike. The reason for this warm welcome was the restoration of choice to women over their bodies.

Antiretrovirals have restored the choice to have children to HIV-positive women. The lack of support for these rights is evidence of the lack of social and public dialogue around HIV and the myths and norms that surround it. In Namibia the advances preventing mother to child transmission means that 90% of babies are born HIV free. It’s not a 100%, but it is certainly a reason to give HIV-positive women the opportunity to exercise their rights to their bodies in the same way that HIV-negative women do.

Forced sterilisation is a violation of human rights. It is a violation of women’s rights. It is a form of gender-based violence and it is something we should all be concerned about — it’s the violent, medical mutilation of women’s rights to bear children.