The Fourth Trimester

Women are worthless. They have no value-- in fact, if you take a logical approach to the concept, they're actually worth a negative value. After birth, they only carry out domestic work and bring in no real income. Once they're of reasonable age to marry, a dowry must be paid to get them off the hands of their parents. And then after marraige, some of these women have the audacity of reproducing other female offspring, to start this vicous cycle over again...
Yeah, fuck that.
I can't tell you, in the mere 4 weeks I've been here, the number of gender selective abortions I have been exposed to, heard about, and even witnessed is alarmingly high. This isn't only a notion accepted by the male dominated society, it's by the women as well. They've been conditioned to believe they have no self-worth, and thus giving birth to another female is not an option. Just a week ago, at gynecological health camps that were being run by Dr.Pritam and a few of the Jagori staff, including myself, I saw a very peculiar case. 11 months pregnant- don't know how she was alive and still walking, but she was 11 months pregnant. Now that's not what caught me offguard-- the woman and her husband, at the 3 month stage had gone to a private clinic (public hospitals, PHCs no longer conduct ultrasounds in here) paid a little extra money to get an ultrasound. Already having 4 daughters, this was the 5th one on the way. Naturally, the only option was to abort at 3 months. There's been a craze around a medication that can be gained over the counter these days that aborts the child here in India...without any real effort. Take the pill at home, the baby will come out early and dead-- a little messy maybe, but much better than giving birth to a girl right?
Wrong.
The child never came out. Her uterus is still the size of a dead three month child, and the baby never left her stomach. I don't know how she's not septic, full of infection, or even dead. But Dr. Pritam assured me that this wasn't the only case of this kind she's seen.
It's so unfortunate how women are viewed in some of these villages, and how it's such burden, not a joy to give birth to a little girl. It brings me back to the phonecall my parents recieved after my birth-- the one where an elderly woman apologized that they had 'another daughter.' Lucky my parents don't view the world in this skewed way.
I'm a little annoyed after writing this one to be entirely honest, I'll check in soon to write about more positive things hopefully. I've made good progress on my work so far, and am even looking for ways to incorporate into a potential long term thesis project where I'll be returning to India in the next 1-1.5 years. I'm really interested in this massive gap that exists between policy development, implementation, and awareness...
Miss you all.
S.