"Untimely Cut" A video about the sterilization of Akha Women as sponsored by the American BaptistMissionary Paul W. Lewis 15 minutes Untimely Cut is a video about the clouded sterilization program of Akha women, conducted over a number of years on the part of the American Baptist Missionary Paul W. Lewis who used his extensive contacts and trust within the Akha community to sterilize Akha women.

According to the interview of Paul W. Lewis in this documentary, the Thai government was concerned about there being too many Akha Hill Tribe people in Thailand and wanted some way to control their population, hoping that he could help them through a sterilization program that was "pioneering" to the Thais.

Paul W. Lewis was apparently more than happy to help and in cooperation with the Thai government conducted years of sterilizations of Akha women from Burma and Thailand with the help of the late Dr. McDaniel, McCormick Presbyterian Hospital in Chiang Mai, a thai female doctor in Payao, and Family Planning International, strange bedfellows for an Evangelical it would seem, well, maybe not.

This mentality to sterilize poor hilltribe women such as the Akha which Paul W. Lewis pioneered, continues on to this day through the Thai system of "health services", some women still being sterilized against their verbal objection because they have "had enough" children. First the Thai medical staff note coursely, how many women they have, then tell them that they must come back and deliver at the hospital to get an ID paper for the child, then the sterilization of course occurs. Though the Thais deny that any sterilizations happen against the will of the women, we have in fact documented first hand that this is not the truth.

The Akha complained of a host of results of this Lewis program, which appeared to be applied to the Akha in Burma on a quota system, men rewarded for how many women they could recruit and bring across the border, Baptist Akha Pastors often used in this network.

Any woman with two children was encourage to be sterilized. Little concern was given to the extreme poverty of these people. Following the procedure many women lost their existing children who died of ill health and these women were then left childless and their families came apart as a result of their inability to have children or pay for having the ill conceived procedure reversed. This miscalculation on the part of those so eager to do these procedures apparently went unnoticed.

Though Paul W. Lewis has plenty of money from trade in Akha artifacts, book publications, his well known connections in the Baptist Church and Mission Societies, and the continuation of his culture bashing churches and mission DAPA and ACT, there still are no moneys to give redress to the women who were made to suffer in this ill conceived butchery.

Pastors in Burma, when they are not busy taking hand outs from the missions, tell that many women died following the procedure due to problems and weakened condition that it brought on.

Few people to date have any true idea of the physical and spiritual results of these sterilization procedures for women.

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Although Paul W. Lewis claims that the procedure that the women underwent was the best known at the time, the conditions they lived under "were much poorer" which would seem some reason to merit caution but apparently not.

Numerous women, who's pictures and testimonies we have on video in Untimely Cut, tell of the results of this procedure.

We are opposed to the sterilizations of women who live in poverty, lack human rights and have very little freedom of infomation, movement or representation.

We think that it is immoral and without excuse, and even criminal that these procedures occured. Criminal, because the procedures were not legal in Burma, and the women had to be moved across country lines for the surgery, against set laws that the Burmese government had in place to prevent the careless use of these procedures against the full understanding and consent of the women involved.