Venezuela's food shortages, inflation and crumbling medical sector have become such a source of anguish that a growing number of young women are reluctantly opting for sterilizations rather than face the hardship of pregnancy and child-rearing. Traditional contraceptives like condoms or birth control pills have virtually vanished from store shelves, pushing women towards the hard-to-reverse surgery. While no recent national statistics on sterilizations are available, doctors and health workers say demand for the procedure is growing. (Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

Getting her tongue pierced was “exciting and scary” says a teen who succumbed to pressure from her best friend in Austin, Texas, February 22, 2008. This image is featured in National Geographic's exhibition “Women of Vision: National Geographic Photographers on Assignment”, on view at the Palm Beach Photographic Centre, Jan. 22 - Mar. 22, 2015. (Photo by Kitra Cahana/National Geographic)

Iraqi Kurdish female fighter Haseba Nauzad looks through a pair of binoculars during a deployment near the frontline of the fight against Islamic State militants in Nawaran near Mosul, Iraq, April 20, 2016. (Photo by Ahmed Jadallah/Reuters)

A group of tattooed women from the Muun tribe who inhabit the hills of the Arakan state. The design, known as the letter B-pattern, is common in the Mindat area. It is composed of dots, lines and occasionally circles, in February, 2015, in Myanmar, Burma. With spider webs, B-patterns and crossed lines painstakingly inked on their faces these stunning photographs show the tattooed women of Burma. French photographer Eric Lafforgue travelled to the Chin, Rakhine and Arakan states of northwestern Myanmar to capture the rare facial designs. (Photo by Eric Lafforgue/Barcroft Media)

Two sailors from HMS Fury enjoy a smoke with two women in bathing suits on a beach in Jersey, where their ship is on a visit. (Photo by William Vanderson/Fox Photos/Getty Images). 29th June 1935

Gulparai, 12, (L) smokes heroin along side her mother Sabera and brother Zaher, 14, (R) August 27, 2007 in Kabul, Afghanistan. (Photo by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

Three secondary schoolboys smoking an illicit cigarette in Hyde Park, London. (Photo by Evening Standard/Getty Images). May 1972

A tear rolls down the cheek of Karima el-Mahroug, also known as Ruby, a Moroccan woman at the center of ex-Premier Silvio Berlusconi's s*x-for-hire trial, as she reads a statement to reporters during a protest outside the court house, in Milan, Italy, Thursday, April 4, 2013. The Moroccan woman at the center of ex-Premier Silvio Berlusconi's s*x-for-hire trial has denounced what she says is psychological warfare being waged against her by Italian prosecutors. Ruby, read out a lengthy statement Thursday to a gaggle of reporters in front of Milan's courthouse denying she was a prostitute and insisting that prosecutors hear her side of the story. (Photo by Luca Bruno/AP Photo)