Women in Uzbekistan routinely sterilized without consent

A program to sterilize women without their consent (or even knowledge) is underway in Uzbekistan, according to the BBC. Journalists who have spoken to doctors and victims tell of sterilization of Uzbek women after childbirth on massive scale. The news is shocking enough, but why is Uzbekistan's government doing this?

The BBC report on the issue of forced sterilization shares stories of several women who had this happen to them. Many of these women gave birth to their second babies, and they had their tubes tied immediately following a c-section. In even more extreme cases, women discovered their uterus was missing when they went to the doctor with pain. Others only found out when they couldn't get pregnant for years. Some of these women were even childless!

The victims' stories are dreadful, but the information Uzbek doctors share is even more shocking, because it reveals the systematic nature of the "program". Some gynecologists are told they must sterilize four women a month, while others are order to do the same to at least eight a week! The quota for sterilizations are different depending on the doctor's location, and they are additionally provided with quota for birth control.

But WHY? According to some doctors, it is a twisted mechanism that enables the impoverished central Asian republic to say that infant mortality has decreased. There's no chance infant mortality when there is no infant, after all! Others say that this is simply a measure to slow down the birth rate in the country, which currently has a population of 27 million.

Russian newspapers, as well as the Associated Press, have written about these efforts as much as two years back already. Apparently, the practice happens most often after women have their second child. Rumors about the threat of forced sterilization have caused many women in Uzbekistan, where families are traditionally much larger, to give birth at home.