Women need permission for particular healthcare options
Lastly, what I find to be the most horrendous of all inequality's women face. Healthcare. Many women choose not to have children at all, they may choose to want to limit how many children they have, or they may choose to space out when they have their children. Sterilization is one of the best proven methods to ensure no more pregnancies occur for a woman. Yet, for some reason, men can walk into a clinic and be sterilized without being questioned twice. Meanwhile, women face a very troublesome experience seeking sterilization or evening wanting to continue their family. “Sterilization practices have embodied a problematic tension, in which some women who desired fertility were sterilized without their knowledge or consent, and other women who wanted sterilization to limit their family size lacked access to it” (American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Number 695, April 2017).
Not only are options limited because you are a woman, but they also, often, do not provide the proper education to the woman wanting or not wanting contraceptives. Depending on where a woman stood in age, social class, marriage, race, etc., was how they got the options that were “available” to them. In other words, if you were married in your 40’s and had at least 2 children of opposite sex, you could choose what contraceptives you were “allowed” to receive. “Reproductive experiences are, therefore, “stratified,” such that “some categories of people are empowered to nurture and reproduce, while others are disempowered” to do so” (American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Number 695, April 2017).
Living this exact experience, I know what is like. I was 24 when I had my son, at 33 weeks, and spent too much time in the NICU. My oldest daughter was also a preemie. I wanted more children, but I was terrified of them coming any earlier than my others did. I also lost a baby, which was so devastating. I could not bear the thought of going through another loss, so I choose to have a permanent sterilization done, so we would never have to fear again. As I sat in my doctor's office, they tried to scare me into not having it done, in fear I may LOSE one of my living and healthy children, that if I lost them that I would indeed want to replace them with another child. The most horrifying words ever spoken to me. Because I was not in my 30’s or 40’s or legally married, I had to have at least 5 doctors in the office sign off that, what I wanted, the sterilization was the best thing for me.
Women have equal rights though, right? Women are still treated less than men, women are treated as delicate flowers or crazy, women are treated as we've always been treated, as just women.
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References:
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. “Sterilization of Women: Ethical Issues and Considerations”. (2017). Retrieved November 12, 2020, from https://www.acog.org/clinical/clinical-guidance/committee-opinion/articles/2017/04/sterilization-of-women-ethical-issues-and-considerations
