a sad post

Because this can be a very sad place.

I was thinking the other day about my younger ardently feminist self, and how some of my views have shifted or softened, while my core commitment to the flourishing of women has remained passionately intact.

In the US, the phrase "a woman's right to choose" is used in the narrow context of reproductive health, but we can do so because broader "rights to choose" are taken for granted. We simply assume that women have a say in what happens in their life and to their person. But when considered here, the phrase almost sounds like a sick joke. Afghan women do not chose. The vast majority of women here have no control over the most fundamental aspects of their lives-- whom or when they will marry, or when they will have children. Even in our hospital, when a woman needs an emergency Cesarean section to save her life or that of her baby, a male relative must first be found to consent for the surgery.

A woman today woke up from anesthesia screaming "where's my leg?!" because it was her husband and brother's decision--not hers--to amputate the infected limb, and she wasn't told what kind of procedure she was having. The foreign surgeon who advised against the surgery says she will probably die anyway.