New Delhi, India — On a chilly November night last year, Poonam Devi and three other women from her village were surgically sterilized at a health center near their village, Basoli, in India’s Sonbhadra district.
A typical government-run rural health center, that day it was hosting a mass sterilization camp. Women in large numbers — anywhere between 50 and 100 — are lined up and given an approximately five-minute procedure to tie their fallopian tubes.
Devi was one of at least 50 other women who underwent tubectomies that day. At around 8 p.m., she was called into a room for the surgery, made to rest an hour, and sent home.
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About the author
Cheena Kapoorcheenakapoor
Cheena Kapoor is a Delhi-based independent journalist and photographer focusing on health, environmental, and social issues. Her work has been published by The Guardian, The Telegraph, Reuters, BBC, and Al Jazeera, among many others. Her long-term project "Forgotten daughters" about abandoned women in Indian mental asylums has been widely published and exhibited across Europe. Follow Cheena on Twitter and Instagram.