This is not the Kigali of the genocide. I repeat, NOT the Kigali of the genocide. Rwandans, demonstrating unfathomable resilience, have restored the country to its organized, dynamic, industrious ways of being many years ago.
What do you tell an 18-year-old virgin with uterine prolapse? “We’ll take out your uterus”? That’s crazy. “Here, use this pessary, it’ll hold it all inside and you take it out for sex”? Equally crazy. In remote villages in the Democratic Republic on Congo, that choice guarantees that she’ll never marry, never bear children, never live the life she’s planned the whole time she’s been living.
"I just finished watching a video of two educated, middle-class American men hooked up to machines that simulate the contractions of childbirth. The experience transformed them.. But these men survived this simulated childbirth for one . . . whole . . . hour. What if these two daredevils tried to simulate the (days-long) obstructed childbirths endured by women in developing countries?"
Hormones—always a hotspot when it comes to science reporting in the lay press—sparked yet another over-interpretation of a medical study in this month’s issue of the journal Menopause.
Momentum continues to build with the globalization of women's rights, including the right to live a genitally intact life. What better time for Waris Dirie's story to emerge?