As a female Member of Parliament, I think women feel more comfortable talking to me about some of their most private experiences. Perhaps because they think I can relate. Often, they are right.

And so, over the years, hundreds of women have spoken with me about the domestic abuse they face from their spouses. Others ask me to help them leave their spouse or assist them in going back to school so that they can have more financial independence. Some seek welfare aid or a monetary grant to start a business to be less dependent on their babyfather, or they request building material with hopes of constructing a ‘one room’ for themselves and their children.

When they sit in front of me they frequently whisper; feeling frustrated or emotionally exhausted from all the stress they must endure behind closed doors. However, there is one experience several women have shared with me that particularly has raised my ire. This has to do with the pushback they get from the public health clinic or hospital as young single mothers who request to “tie their tubes”; that is, have a tubal ligation.

This is a procedure that may provide permanent birth control. It’s commonly called “getting your tubes tied”. In this surgery, your fallopian tubes are cut, blocked, or sealed off to prevent pregnancy.

The Mayo Clinic states that tubal ligation prevents an egg from moving from the ovaries and down to the uterus through the fallopian tubes. It also blocks sperm from travelling up the fallopian tubes to the egg. The procedure doesn’t affect a woman’s menstrual cycle.

However, the procedure is reversible by reconnecting the woman’s fallopian tubes with another surgery to allow a woman who has had her tubes tied to become pregnant again.

Recently, a young 35-year-old mother came into my office to ask if I could help her with her six children as she could no longer work based on an illness she developed. She told me all her children were on the Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH), but it was not enough and, most times, she was not financially able to send her children to school or provide adequate food for them.

When I asked about the father of the children, and if he was helping her, she told me that her children had multiple fathers. How come you may be wondering?

When one father left she would end up in another relationship for financial support, and ultimately get pregnant again. It was a cycle she found herself in. She is not the exception in living like this in Jamaica. I have many other working-class women who end up having multiple children with multiple fathers as a form of help.

On this occasion, this young woman was not asking for me to help with ‘back-to-school’ assistance, but rather if I could speak to the nurse and doctors at the hospital to help her get her tubes tied.

She told me that she had gone to the public hospital three different times, and each time the doctor and nurse denied her.

Why did they deny her? They told her she was not married yet and was still young. Worse, they told her that her “husband’ would need to come in also and give consent, and she was not yet married. She even brought her mother to beg them to do it for her, as she was watching her daughter struggle with her six children, and she didn’t want any more children. They still refused to perform the procedure.

I sat there once again bewildered, as this was not the first time that I heard this. Several other single mothers have shared their experiences with me; where the public clinic or hospital told them that they were not going to tie their tubes because they were too young or they were not married yet.

Unlike the termination of a pregnancy, where in Jamaican law it is illegal, tubal ligation is not. Furthermore there is no law or policy that states who can or who is not entitled to choose this method of birth control. Therefore, why is a doctor or nurse in the public health system overextending their authority on a woman reproductive rights if she chooses not have any more children or have children at all?

Moreover, why do some of our public health practitioners feel that marriage should be their deciding factor?

Already women in Jamaica do not have the choice as to whether they want to carry their pregnancy to term. It is the State that has the authority. Then, if this is so, why not give a woman the freedom over her body after she has had her child(ren) to choose whether or not she wants to have any more?

Regrettably, this is the system meted out to many of our poor and working-class women who cannot afford to go to a private doctor for the procedure. They have no equity or choices. It seems in Jamaica they must ‘have out their lot’ and rely on their spouse for permission to stop or determine when they should stop.

The young lady who sat in my office that day told me she thought that oral, injectable, or uterine/device birth control was not healthy for her body, which is why she wanted to tie her tubes instead. At 35 years old, with six children, I think she is the one in the best position to know how her body feels, what she wants for it in the future, and how she wants to nurture and protect her mental health. Unfortunately, the State, through our public health system, has not given her what she needs to cope at this time of the best opportunities for her reproductive choices.

In a country that boasted the highest proportion of women managers of any country on Earth, 59.3 per cent, according to a study by the International Labour Organization (ILO), and where the majority of our university graduates are women, and where we give them equity in maternity leave, homeownership, opening bank accounts, voting rights, and legal rights in common law relationships over five years, then why in the world do we continue to sabotage their ability to choose on their own the best options for their reproductive health?

It is time we begin to listen to the reproductive decisions of our women. When they are ready to ‘tie their tubes’ it is their decision, and not for the doctor or nurse to tell them to wait for their man/husband to give their consent.

Lisa Hanna is Member of Parliament for St Ann South Eastern, People’s National Party spokesperson on foreign affairs and foreign trade, and a former Cabinet member.