Poor women are deprived of childbearing .. A devastating life for victims of forced infertility

“How did that happen? I have a daughter and that means I had a uterus.” With these words Punjikil Messiebi remembers the events of her tragedy with forced sterilization, and the shock started when the doctor told her that it was impossible to give birth again because she is without a uterus.

She is one of the South African women who underwent forced sterilization between 2002 and 2015 while they were in the country's public hospitals to have their children.

Four years ago, the earth shook beneath the feet of Mississippi, a 15-year-old mother of a teenager, when she learned the reason why she was unable to have a second child, and she simply had no womb.

Was it a nightmare experienced by the young mother? "I didn't understand what the doctor was saying," remembers 32-year-old Missy, trying to hold back her tears.

She exhausted all her physical and psychological energies to understand the unimaginable, and her personal investigations led her to Chris Hani Paragwanath Hospital, a public institution in Johannesburg where she gave birth to her daughter in 2005. There, the 2016 gynecologist explained to her that her uterus had been removed after birth.

Victims of forced infertility

Mississippi is one of 48 women who were victims of forced infertility between 2002 and 2015 in South Africa, according to an investigation published at the end of February.

The local Gender Equality Commission condemned the "cruel, brutal, inhuman and degrading treatment" of women, all with black skin, when placing their children during caesarean sections in public hospitals.

Most of the women were infected with HIV, but Punjikel was 17 when she gave birth to her only child, that is, at a dangerous age.

In an interview with Agence France-Presse, Mississippi said that health workers "benefited from the situation, and they wanted to play the role of God" by specifying who could live and who should die. "They thought they could do whatever they wanted, at the height of our weakness and our inability to move," she added.

In 2016, the gynecologist told Mississippi that she had undergone forced sterilization to save her life. He questioned it.

Laws in this country prohibit forced sterilization, but doctors do not need the patient’s consent when her life is in danger.

In most of the cases examined by the Commission for Gender Equality, Chairwoman Tamara Mathibula says health workers explained to the patients that the operations were necessary "because we have HIV and tuberculosis, and because we thought you had many children, look at yourself, you are poor We could not allow but to continue having children. "

"But these arguments were not the actual reasons why a woman's uterine canal was linked or completely removed," she said.

Surrender versus pain

In fact, many women have been threatened that they will not be given treatment if they do not sign documents authorizing sterilization, and others are forced to sign in moments of "severe pain" suffering, according to the commission.

But for Mississippi, there was no sign of her signing her womb in 2005.

The young woman decided to shed light on this problem and engaged in a long battle, as she wrote letters to health authorities and politicians and organized several protests.

"The authorities are lacking in mercy," said Missy, who lives in the outskirts of Johannesburg. "Doctors feel that without feeling, they will nail and grow again. I cannot sit back and accept my uterine extract without knowing the reason. I have a feeling that I am deficient."

After publishing the report of the Commission for Gender Equality, the Ministry of Health agreed to meet the complainants, which offered little consolation to the victims.

It appears that the Ministry of Health is reluctant to talk about this sensitive issue, and ministry spokesperson Louzi Manzi says, "We are awaiting a response from the Commission for Gender Equality to issue a joint statement."

Women who have lost part of their bodies struggle in their private lives. Mathibula says some of them "were abandoned by their husbands because they were no longer fit to have children."

Shortly after the discovery of infertility, Musaibi separated from her husband, saying, "He wanted more children, which I cannot achieve."

Genetic discrimination

Many countries have implemented policies of forced infertility. In Japan, more than 16,000 citizens underwent coercive infertility between 1949 and 1996 pursuant to a genetic discrimination law, and it is believed that around 7,600 poor black women were subjected to forced sterility in North Carolina, United States from 1929 to 1974.