Indias Lethal Contraceptive Culture

With a country that is home to a population of more than 1.3 billion people, how does a government combat overpopulation when resources are increasingly growing thin? It is now becoming more common in India for women to become sterilized. Ranjita Suryavanshi was one of the women who went to a mass-sterilization camp to get a laparoscopic tubectomy and ensure that she would not get pregnant. Her health kept worsening until she died in the hospital. Due to the 83 women who were taken in the 5 hour time span that day, 13 of the women died that day because of the horrible conditions everything the camp was held in, basically making it seem like an industrialized factory line. Because it is cheaper for women to get a tubecotmy, men usually do not undergo vasecotmies, or use condoms, due to to the limitation in the rural country. Other than there being just 13 deaths that day in the sterilization camp, 50 of the women were hospitalized. This is not uncommon in India, as sometimes there are over 100 women that are hospitalized during the process in a day, basically showing how unsanitary the sterilization process is, and how unethical it is to have so many done to women in one day. Due to the commonality of the issue, the government gives around 400,000 rupees to the families of the women who died, and 50,000 to the women who were hospitalized. The equivalent to 400,000 rupees is around 6,500 dollars, which should not even be compensated due to the conditions that were performed in which caused these injuries. This whole mass-stereilzation process shows how important it is that the camps need to be sanitary and are causing more harm than good being done to the women.

Paul Rollet 

http://america.aljazeera.com/multimedia/2015/2/female-sterilization-in-india.html