Meridith Kohut Photography

CARACAS, VENEZUELA - JULY 8, 2017: Twenty-one women were surgically sterilized during a free sterilization event at the public, and government-run José Gregorio Hernández​ Hospital in the working-class neighborhood of Catia. The hospital has sterilized over 300 women through this program. The women being operated on this day ranged in age from 25 to 32 years old, all 21 have multiple children, and expressed wanting to get sterilized because the economic crisis in Venezuela has made it too difficult to raise children. They all said they feared becoming pregnant again. The economic crisis has led to widespread shortages of essential baby supplies, like diapers, formulas, milk and medicine. It was also led to widespread shortages of birth control pills and condoms - many mothers at sterilization event said their most recent pregnancies had been unplanned and unwanted and happened because they did not have access to birth control - so they opted for sterilization as a guaranteed way to not get pregnant again. One of the women getting sterilized during the clinic this day was professional hair stylist, Eddy Farías, 25, who is a single mother of five children. Her wages as a full-time employee at a hair salon are barely enough to feed her children - so she decided to get sterilized to prevent from getting pregnant again. "It's hard to be a mom, it's hard! she said. “You cannot find anything…if your child gets sick, you have to run circles trying to find a hospital [to admit them],” she said. “It is a war just to survive day to day." After her operation, she was in pain from the large incision made across her lower abdomen - but said she felt relieved that she would no longer have to jump through the hoops Venezuelan mothers must jump through to access the basic supplies needed to raise a child. “If I got pregnant again, that would mean I’d have to go to war again for diapers…it is like war to have to buy diapers on the black market, or have to wake