Hundreds of Uzbek Women Report Forced Sterilization

"He never asked for my approval, never ran any checks, just mutilated me as if I were a mute animal," Saodat Rakhimbayeva, a 24-year-old Uzbek woman, told the Associated Press, referring to the doctor who sterilized her without her consent.

Rakhimbayeva was at the hospital for a cesarean section, but ended up having part of her uterus cut away. While the doctor claimed that he was addressing a cyst that could have been cancerous, the fact that there are hundreds of reports of doctors performing forced sterilization in Uzbekistan due to government pressure gives his excuse a hollow ring. Rakhimbayeva's newborn son died almost immediately, leaving her without the ability to ever have her own child. And, because children are an important part of male-dominated Uzbek culture (and women are expected to be baby machines), Rakhimbayeva's husband left her upon discovering that she could not give him children.

Among the hundreds of reports of forced sterilization emerging from victims, human rights groups, and health officials, low-income Uzbek women are the most vulnerable to being sterilized against their will. Women with HIV, tuberculosis, or drug addiction are specifically targeted. Often, the instruments used for the procedure are not sterile, posing a danger to the woman's health.

While theoretically Uzbek family planning policy is just supposed to make surgical contraception available to women who agree voluntarily free of charge, in practice women are sterilized without providing consent or coerced into agreeing. Some employers even require certificates of sterilization before they will hire a woman, who may not have any other options to put food on the table.

Unfortunately, the government's desire to reduce the high birth rate in the country could be a positive thing for women, if approached in the right way — one young mother agreed to voluntary sterilization because her husband refused to allow them to use condoms or birth control pills. The Uzbek government could have a strong positive influence if it worked against the patriarchal, misogynistic norms that keep women from exercising control over their own reproductive choices and stigmatizes women without children. (I also don't hear them prioritizing encouraging men to opt for a vasectomy.)

Uzbekistan isn't the only country to have a serious problem with violating women's reproductive rights: Sarah Menkedick recently wrote about the horror of forced sterilization and abortion in China, and the Namibia Women's Health Network is working to stop the forced or coerced sterilization of Namibian women. Even right here in the United States, a woman alleged that a doctor decided to sterilize her in 2006 without gaining consent — and, more disturbingly, many people felt that because she was already a mother of nine who received public assistance, that the doctor's illegal violation of her reproductive rights was justified. In addition, Ryan Brown points out on Salon that legal forced sterilization was still being performed in America in 1981. Not to mention the constant attempts by the Religious Right to subject American women to forced pregnancy.

Women have the right to control their own bodies. Any violation of that bodily integrity, whether it be forced sterilization, forced abortion, or forced pregnancy, is a severe infringement on their human rights.

Photo credit: Giorgio Montersino