Before medicine had a word for it, language already knew. The room where a human being is assembled shares its root, in Arabic, with Mercy itself—not a metaphor bolted on afterward, but a fact buried in the bones of the word. Al-Rahman. Al-Rahim. Rahm. Three words breathing the same breath. And yet we have built an entire clinical civilization that treats this room as disposable furniture—useful while occupied, discardable once vacated. This essay is an argument against that amnesia, mounted on two fronts at once: the laboratory and the lexicon.
Let me start with a number that stopped me cold. One in three women in the United States will have their uterus removed by the age of sixty. In some Indian states the figure climbs sharply—Andhra Pradesh reports a prevalence of nearly nine percent among women aged fifteen to forty-nine, the highest in the country. Meanwhile, surgeries to remove male reproductive organs remain exceedingly rare—orchiectomy is almost always a last resort for testicular cancer, a disease that itself accounts for only about one percent of all male cancers.
I sat with this asymmetry for a long time. Why is an organ that defines the very architecture of female embodiment so casually discarded? Why is the surgical removal of the uterus—a major operation with significant consequences—treated with such clinical nonchalance, while male reproductive structures are guarded with near-sanctity?
The answer, I began to suspect, lies in how we’ve been taught to think about the uterus: as a vessel, a container, useful only while it serves a gestational function, and disposable once that function is fulfilled. It’s a view that reduces creation to mere utilitarianism. And it’s a view that I’ve come to believe is not just scientifically premature, but philosophically cruel.
Even during its reproductively active years, the uterus is not merely a gestational vessel. It is a dynamic organ that communicates with the brain, harbors regenerative cells, and participates in whole-body maintenance.
Consider this: researchers have proposed that endometrial cells—the cells that line the uterus—may circulate during the menstrual cycle in ways that extend beyond the uterus itself, potentially contributing to regenerative processes elsewhere in the body. This remains a hypothesis rather than settled science, but it sits alongside a well-established finding: premenopausal women carry a markedly lower burden of cardiovascular disease than age-matched men, a protection that fades sharply after menopause.
The uterus, it seems, is not just a reproductive organ. It is a source of systemic support, a participant in the body’s ongoing conversation with itself.
And yet, when menopause arrives, we declare it useless.
I found myself asking a question that went against everything I had been taught: What if the postmenopausal uterus still has utility?
It seemed like heresy. The standard medical view is clear: the postmenopausal uterus atrophies, becoming dormant and useless. It’s the reason hysterectomies are performed so casually, the reason the organ is viewed as disposable. But as I dug deeper, I found research that challenged this narrative in ways I hadn’t expected. A 2014 study delivered a revelation. Researchers demonstrated that postmenopausal endometrium contains mesenchymal stem cells that retain the same regenerative properties as those found in premenopausal women—regardless of whether the women had received estrogen treatment. These cells are perivascular (located around blood vessels), identifiable by specific markers, and capable of self-renewal and differentiation.
The study concluded that these cells are “a promising source of MSC independent of a woman’s age.”
Let me translate that: the postmenopausal uterus is not a depleted organ. It is a dormant reservoir of regenerative potential, still holding the capacity to heal and rebuild. The cells are still there. They’re just waiting.
The Brain-Uterus Connection
Then I came across research from Arizona State University that genuinely startled me. The study found that hysterectomy alone—even when the ovaries were left intact—caused a unique and detrimental impact on working memory in a rat model. The hysterectomy-only group could not handle a high-demand working memory load, repeatedly returning to places where platforms had never been.
The researchers concluded that the nonpregnant uterus is not dormant, and that disrupting the reproductive tract appears to interrupt a broader ovarian-uterus-brain system, with consequences for brain functioning.
The uterus, it turns out, is not silent. It is in active dialogue with the brain. Its removal disrupts that conversation.
A Hypothesis That Reframes Menopause
Some researchers have proposed something more radical still: that the cyclical activity of endometrial stem cells during menstruation may play a role in a broader, still poorly understood system of bodily maintenance—and that the loss of this activity after menopause may be entangled with postmenopausal changes in cardiovascular health, bone density, and cognition. This remains speculative, and the mechanisms are far from settled. But it invites a reframing.
Menopause, in this view, may not be simply a failure of the uterus. It may mark the end of a systemic support role the uterus previously played. The uterus was not merely a reproductive organ; it may have been a source of whole-body maintenance.
As I sat with these discoveries, I kept returning to a word that had haunted me since I first encountered it. The Arabic word rahm means womb. Its triliteral root—R-H-M—is the same root that gives us al-Rahman (The Most Merciful) and al-Rahim (The Most Compassionate), two of the most sacred names of God in Islamic theology. Across Hindu and Buddhist traditions, the womb is elevated to similar cosmic significance.
In Sanskrit, yoni means womb, source, and origin of all creation. It represents prakriti, the active, creative force of the universe, and the divine feminine principle Shakti. The metaphysical concept Brahman is called the “yoni of the universe,” linking the physical womb to cosmic creation.
In Tantric traditions, the yoni is worshipped as the ultimate source of life and liberation, a sacred symbol of the creative power that underlies all existence.
“Our task is not to declare parts redundant, but to learn to read with patience the alphabet of our own existence.”
The alphabet of the uterus is written in the language of regeneration, cognition, and mercy, a language we are only beginning to learn. And in that learning, we may discover not only the hidden wisdom of the body, but also the hidden wisdom of the divine.
I was sharing some of this with our helper at school one afternoon. She listened, and then she told me something that has stayed with me since: that after her own hysterectomy, she can no longer hold her trousers in place the way she used to. Something in how her body sits, how it holds itself upright and together, had shifted. She did not know the words prolapse or pelvic floor or systemic support.
Strange to think that the very architecture of my body—the room where I was assembled, where I might have assembled another—could be reduced to uselessness by a medical establishment that sees only function, not meaning.
But the uterus hears its own name. It knows its lineage with a mercy that is perpetual and continuous, never ending. So how could it hold no meaning beyond what we are told?
Imam Ali (a.s.) [Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib (the cousin and son-in-law of Prophet Muhammad, and the first Imam in Shia Islam] says:
“Your sickness is from you, but you do not perceive it, and your remedy is within you, but you do not sense it. You presume you are a small entity, but within you is enfolded the entire universe. You are indeed the evident book, by whose alphabet the hidden becomes manifest. Therefore you have no need to look beyond yourself. What you seek is within you, if only you reflect.”
Bio: Sabahat Fida I am an educator based in Kashmir with masters in the field of zoology and philosophy. I write at the crossroads of science, philosophy, metaphysics and spirituality. My articles have appeared in The Hindu, The Swaddle, The Wire , Daily philosophy etc https://in.linkedin.com/in/sabahat-fida-65a7481a6
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