Giving Up

This story about female farmers going womb-less to be more productive makes for incredibly sad reading. It brings to mind watching my mother recover from this procedure before she turned forty. Given the history of cancer in her family and her age, the doctor determined this was the safest bet. I recall her suffering both physically and emotionally - the feeling of being hollowed out and emptied as she described it. An assortment symptoms including persistent aches and pains followed. She was never quite the same again; just learned to cope and move on with her life.  

My mother was told there was no other choice and that was probably right in her case. But for these young women, the lack of choice that drives them to such resolution is a product of societal apathy. For the want of access to period products, these women have to be emptied and hollowed out, made to suffer the rest of their lives from botched procedures they did not even need. It was deeply sobering to think about hysterectomy and choice in light of what I saw in my family and reading this today.