INDIA
The long and arduous journey to become a mother
In Indian society, infertility is seen as a woman’s burden. If, immediately after marriage she is not able to bear a child, she is usually stigmatised and blamed. They are derogatorily called manhoos and vanjh (meaning barren) or are accused of possessing an evil eye.
The prevalence of infertility in India is estimated to be between 3.9 to 16.8 percent, according to the World Health Organization. Yet, couples who are struggling with infertility do not receive adequate health care. This has an often unseen and unmeasured impact on women, who remain trapped in religious beliefs and traditional practices that limit their control over their own bodies and their exercise of sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Fatimabiwi is a 35-year-old Muslim woman from a village in Tamil Nadu, India. The youngest of nine children, Fatimabiwi only finished second standard. As a Muslim girl from a conservative family, she was not allowed to pursue her education. “Double standards still prevail; there are different rules for boys and girls. People talk about development but women and girls are suppressed and their mobility is restricted,” she wrote in her journal.
She got married at the age of 18. It was a marriage arranged by her parents but the choice of groom was with her consent. “My parents showed me the photograph of the groom, I liked him and we got married,” she recalled. She described her marriage as a generally “smooth” one. However, her pregnancies always resulted in miscarriages, almost two a year.
“During the fifth month of each pregnancy, I would get a dream. In the dream there would be someone saying that there is a blood cyst in my womb and not a baby. After that, there would be no movement in the foetus and I would feel uncomfortable. In the hospital, the doctors would say the same reason, that I have a blood cyst or tumour, and ask me to go for an abortion,” Fatimabiwi wrote.
The frequent miscarriages made her sick and bedridden. “Sometimes, I was so tired for months that I couldn’t even get up and cook or carry out my daily household chores,” she shared.
Her medical condition did not improve. Thus, she resorted to traditional religious practices that are based on the underlying belief that infertile women are possessed by evil spirits.
“I started visiting the ‘Darga’ or the mosque regularly and involved myself in the practice of ‘ghaspos’ and ‘mudikairu’ (a practice done by spell healers and witch hunters to get rid of evil spirits). I did all sort of things that spell healers or witch hunters say… Once I even went to a spell healer, he asked me to give INR 10,000 (approximately USD 167). My husband said it is just a false belief and that they will take the money and there will would be no remedy for me, but I did what the spell healer said. I gave a lot of importance to religious practices with the trust that ‘Allah will answer my prayers.’ But nothing happened,” Fatimabiwi wrote.
