PBS "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" Examines Efforts In India To Provide Reverse Sterilizations For Women Who Lost Children In 2004 Tsunami

Main Category: Fertility
Article Date: 21 Mar 2006 - 18:00 PDT

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PBS' "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" on Thursday examined charitable efforts to provide reverse sterilizations in India -- where sterilization is the most common form of birth control -- for women whose children died in the 2004 tsunami. According to PBS, women in India are encouraged to be sterilized after the birth of their second or third child. J. Radhakrishnan -- district collector for the region near Nagapattinam, an area of fishing communities located on India's southeastern coast hard hit by the tsunami -- began an "unusual and generous" government program providing free surgery to bereaved parents to restore their fertility, PBS reports. Although the program "might seem a strange decision" for a country where one-third of the one billion residents live on less than $1 per day, children are a measure of self-worth in India and adoption is uncommon, as there is a "strong cultural preference" for having one's own children, according to PBS. The segment also includes comments from public health nurses in India and women whose children died in the tsunami (de Sam Lazaro, "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," PBS, 3/16).

The complete transcript is available online. The complete segment is available online in RealPlayer.

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