Women working in sugar fields in India are getting unnecessary hysterectomies in order to keep working, essentially as slaves.
How are you doing with keeping your baptismal vows? Do you think about this one very much: Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?
I think about it a lot, especially where continued violence against women is concerned. It’s not getting better. I feel so helpless where many are concerned.
But here’s one example that we might be able to do something about.
The shocking news report first appeared in a March 2024 piece in the New York Times: women in sugar fields in India were getting unnecessary hysterectomies in order to keep working, essentially as slaves.
Why? Well, the explanation is simple.
Young girls are pushed into illegal child marriages so they can work alongside their husbands cutting and gathering sugar cane. Instead of receiving wages, they work to pay off advances from their employers — an arrangement that requires them to pay a fee for the privilege of missing work, even to see a doctor.
An extreme yet common consequence of this financial entrapment is hysterectomies. Labor brokers lend money for the surgeries, even to resolve ailments as routine as heavy, painful periods. And the women — most of them uneducated — say they have little choice.
Hysterectomies keep them working, undistracted by doctor visits or the hardship of menstruating in a field with no access to running water, toilets or shelter.
So, very young women are suddenly faced with menopause and all the significant health implications of the sudden removal of estrogen from their systems. This permits their continued work as slaves in the sugar fields of India.
Why do those inhumane practices thrive? Here, in a follow-up to the first article, is the answer:
The reason, to many in Maharashtra, is obvious. Sugar is among the state’s most important industries, one that sells to big brand buyers such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi, and is heavily controlled by the political elite.
According to various reports, most of the sugar coming from these particular sugar cane fields lands in the Coke and Pepsi plants in India. US plants generally get the massive amounts of sugar they use from other sources.
We can help stop these unnecessary hysterectomies with a simple solution
Now, we can’t stop people from other countries from drinking these products. But we in the US could exert a lot of pressure on those companies to stop this injustice.
A simple fact: we in the US spend too much money on heavily sugared drinks and other overly-sugared/processed food anyway. Plus they are awful, just awful, for our health.
Here’s a fairly technical article about the deleterious health effects of overly processed food. A simple summary: Do you want to die early and suffer many debilitating diseases? Just fill up on ultra-processed foods. And Coke and Pepsi specialize in them.
So stop. Just stop. It will take a bit of work, but it is doable.
Here is a list of products besides the soft drinks that Coke manufactures. You may see some favorites on it. It’s OK, water is really, really good and there are many alternatives to the others.
Unlike Pepsi, Coca-Cola does not own any food brands—they are liquids only.
Here’s the list of Pepsi drink products. Here are the food brands that Pepsi owns. There’s a very nice graphic of the extensive Pepsi-owned companies on this site.
Yeah, a lot of these are going to be hard to stop supporting. But every dollar that does not go to one of those brands may indeed bring some pressure to bear on their continuing support of the vile abuse of women and children in those sugar cane fields.
We need to start somewhere. One small protest can go a long, long way to helping enslaved and abused women AND improving our own health and the health of those around us.
We can do this.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In