Saving One is One

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Our partner worker carried a 12-week-old embryo baby model to deliver the message of “priceless life” to women who were preparing for abortion in the hospital.

 

Abortion, a bloody noun.

 

According to the interpretation of Wikipedia, abortion, also known as miscarriage or induced abortion, is the ending of pregnancy by removing an embryo or fetus before it can survive outside the uterus.

 

Under the influence of one child policy, millions of women and mothers undergo abortion or sterilisation every year. The Chinese official report pointed out 13 million cases of abortion annually. When this announcement was still hovering around the ears, some US human rights organisations already felt unacceptable and claimed that the actual number is 10 million more. According to this data, there are 63,013 cases of abortion every day, 2,625 cases every hour, and 43 cases every minute. Various reasons have gradually made abortion a “reasonable” choice and it is silently accepted in the society, which can be implied from an advertisement of a mainland Chinese hospital. In the advertisement, a woman was frustrated because of an unplanned pregnancy. After the hospital’s painless induced abortion, the family and even the grandmother were very happy to welcome her home. Various social influences resulted in sexual experience at young age and the prevalence of abortion.

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The Long-awaited Change of Gender Inequalities in Nepal

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Living in a Hindu country with the caste system, the women of Nepal were traditionally being oppressed. They had a far lower chance to receive education and employment than men. In the worst case, some women in the countryside had to gain permission from their husbands and in-laws for things as trivial as leaving the house, hence they were mostly bound to the kitchens and farms.

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Liberating Female’s Body and Soul from Genital Mutilation

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A mere thought of the procedure of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), where a woman’s labia and clitoris are completely or partially removed, causing her virginal opening to be largely covered by the healing scar tissues, casts no doubt on the brutality of such practice. It is further heart breaking to think that the procedure was done to “ensure” pre-marital puberty. Places such as Ethiopia traditionally practices FGM where countless females were damaged both physically and mentally, with the resulting increased birth complication risks and pain during sexual intercourse.

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A Life with Hope, Untangled from Underage Marriage

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In Bangladesh, arranged marriage is seen as a blessing to the family of young girls, who are often below the legal age of marriage.

Rainy is an Indian girl living in the slums of Bangladesh. Her family is of the lowest caste and could only sustain themselves by doing corpse clearers and janitorial works. They were forbidden from interacting with their community and the women in the family were not allowed outside. Rainy’s parents believed that arranging a marriage for her is a blessing to the family, and was conceivably grateful when they found a man in a rich family proposing to Rainy when she was 15, who recalled, “I was only a kid at the age of 15, I didn’t want to get married yet.” Despite her obvious reluctance and concerns, Rainy’s parents proceeded to arrange for the wedding ceremony. Fortunately, SATHI’s staff visited them in the process and explained to them the drawbacks and unlawfulness of underage marriage, which consequently led them to give in and cancelled the marriage.

Rainy is one of the few lucky girls in Bangladesh who escaped the fate of arranged marriage at a young age, who subsequently finished her high school despite the demeaning tradition.

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Men and Women Joined Hands Against Harmful Traditional Practices in Ethiopia

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Female genital mutilation is still prevalent in Ethiopia [1]. Such derogative custom brought severe physical and mental distress upon females, and the participation of men is imperative in the fight against the system.

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Supporting A Young Bangladeshi Girl’s Ambition

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Jannatul, “The Garden of Heaven,” is the name of a girl who possesses the same transcendent glow in her life, pursuing her dreams despite social and sex limitations of her culture.

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