Free Republic

Drought is driving poor Indian women into exploitative sugar cane work in the central state of Maharashtra, with many of the migrant labourers opting to undergo unnecessary hysterectomies to work even harder, research showed on Feb 7. Years of failed monsoons, extreme heat and droughts have led residents of Beed, a district in the top sugar-producing state to leave and become day labourers on plantations, said the report by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), a London-based think-tank. The research found more than half of the Beed women who had gone to work on sugar plantations had undergone...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — During a tense Congressional Hearing, deductive polymath Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put a widespread conspiracy theory to rest when she vocally insisted that there were no hysterectomies being performed on minors because most of them are too busy working in the mines anyway. The truth-filled gavel drop utterly destroyed the claim by conservatives that the Boston Children's Hospital was performing the irreparable surgeries on minors. "How can minors find the time to travel via minecart to far-away Boston when they're busy mining for coal, iron, and lapis lazuli," explained Ocasio-Cortez to an awestruck chamber. "And it's not just...

avaid Perwaiz, an OB/GYN in Virginia, has been arrested and charged with health care fraud after being accused of sterilizing women without their consent. The FBI had been investigating Perwaiz for over a year after a hospital employee gave them a tip about his unethical actions. According to the Virginian Pilot, women were sent to the hospital by Perwaiz for what they thought were “annual clean outs,” without actually knowing what kind of procedure they would be undergoing. He would then be performing hysterectomies, D&Cs, or tubal ligations without their knowledge or consent. One patient was given a D&C each...

Some of the Uprooted Won't Go Home Again By Richard Morin and Lisa Rein Friday, September 16, 2005; HOUSTON, Sept. 15 -- Fewer than half of all New Orleans evacuees living in emergency shelters here said they will move back home, while two-thirds of those who want to relocate planned to settle permanently in the Houston area, according to a survey by The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health. The wide-ranging poll found that these survivors of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath remain physically and emotionally battered but unbroken. They praised...

As many as 10 million women who have had hysterectomies and who no longer have a cervix are still getting Pap tests, a new study finds. The screening Pap test looks for precancerous cells in tissue scraped from a woman's cervix and can prevent what would otherwise be a common and deadly cancer. But testing most women without a cervix makes little sense, leads to false positives and wastes money, said Dr. Brenda E. Sirovich, a research associate at the Outcomes Group at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in White River Junction, Vt., and the study's lead author. Each test...