Diary of Systemic Injustices

(Photo from INSIDER)

The issue of sterilization has long been a debate. A recently short video reminds of such a familiar systemic injustice topic related to female sterilization. In the video, a grown-up woman is crying about finally getting permission from her doctor to do the tubal ligation after the whole five years. I am not familiar with tubal ligation as a young adult but what I know is it should not take five years to get permission for the surgery that prevents a woman from an unexpected pregnancy. In 2020, the norms of requiring women to get permission from their husbands or fathers to tie their tubes still existed, and in addition to the social biases, the law neither has issued protection on performing the operations without the consent of both spouses. There is a man in the video yelled out the unjust point with the indignant question, he said: “A grown-up woman need to get permission from somebody else to have something done exclusively to her own body that does not hurt anybody else, and does this not pissed anyone else off?” Women have long been oppressed on the issue of female fertility and their bodies have long been disrespected. It gave me a sense of absurdity when I first get to know that such a private issue is a long-lasting debate in society and the reality is that women can have no control over their bodies. How will the young generation think if they are told that part of their organs will belong to their future husbands one day? This is never an issue limited to one generation. The unjust control over women’s bodies is the century-old systemic injustice born under the structure of male privileged. The masculinity put women through the othering. I am not saying that male has no right to intervene in the decision but the purpose of discussing such an issue should never be getting permission. Women should possess control over their bodies and there is no way to achieve without the laws and authority giving up their hypocritical power over reproductive rights in the name of protection. And the government should do what they can to guide public opinion in the right direction.