Marissa closed the cabinet door. “Ask him if he ever sees TB as a female problem,” she asked. She watched Chi-Li’s face as Tse translated. There was always the chance she could hit on something unexpected. But Chi-Li’s expression reflected a negative response to the question. Tse translated that Chi-Li had seen nothing of the kind.

Leaving the procedure room, they walked into an examining room. A female patient was sitting on a chair in the corner. She stood and bowed as the group entered.

Marissa bowed back, sorry to have intruded. Suddenly Marissa stopped. In the center of the room was a relatively modern examining table, complete with stainless steel stirrups.

Seeing the table brought back all the unpleasant procedures she’d endured over the last year in the course of her fertility treatments. She was surprised to see such a modern piece of equipment at the clinic; nearly everything else she’d seen was quite dated and rudimentary.

Stepping over to the table, Marissa absently fingered one of the stirrups. “How did this examining table get here?” she asked.

“The same way all the other equipment got here,” Tse said. “Most of the rural health clinics have such a table.”

Marissa nodded as if she understood. But she didn’t. Of all the pieces of modern equipment to be sent to rural clinics, it seemed strange for them to choose an examining table with stirrups. But having read of the bureaucratic mismanagement problems of Communist governments, she assumed this was just another case in point.

“We use such a table frequently,” Tse said. “Birth control has been given a high priority by the government.”

“I see,” Marissa said. She was about to walk on when she looked back at the table. She was puzzled. “What type of birth control do you favor?” she asked. “Intrauterine devices?”

“No,” Tse said.

“Diaphragms?” Marissa asked, even though she knew they couldn’t use diaphragms since they were too expensive and not effective enough. Yet why a table equipped for internal exams?

“We use sterilization,” Tse said. “After one child the woman is often sterilized. Sometimes we perform sterilization even before the woman has a child if there is a request or if the woman should not have a child.”

Tristan called to Marissa from the next room, but Marissa ignored him. Although she had remembered hearing that sterilization was used for birth-control in the PRC, she hated to hear a doctor speaking so coldly about it. She wondered who got to make the decision of who could bear a child and who couldn’t. The issue offended her feminist sensibilities.

“How do you sterilize these women?” she asked.

“We cannulate the fallopian tubes,” Tse said matter-of-factly.

“Under anesthesia?” Marissa asked.

“No need for anesthesia,” Tse said.

“How can that be?” Marissa asked. She knew that to cannulate the fallopian tubes, the cervix had to be dilated, and dilating the cervix was excruciatingly painful.