Women who have abortions should be punished, said American presidential contender Donald Trump. Hours later, he swallowed his words and reiterated the Republican Party’s stand that it is the offending doctors who ought to be punished. Either way women stand to lose, but it’s no longer politically correct to say ‘punish the women!’ After all, they have votes. An American activist once said, ‘If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.’
While abortion remains a dirty word because it reminds us of illegitimate and adolescent pregnancies, the truth is that it is widely used as a means of birth control when other methods fail. Malayali women living in the Gulf countries come to Kerala to have abortions. Women from the Maldives choose hospitals in Thiruvananthapuram. These are among our best kept secrets.
The birth rate in Kerala has steadily declined in the last few decades and today the average family has only one or two children. Dr. Divya Dhananjayan, an anesthetist from Kannur says, “Six weeks after the birth of the first child, when women come for the first consultation they invariably ask us how to avoid conceiving again. Insertion of copper-T during the first visit is very common. After the second child is born, most women opt for sterilization.”
Dr. Rekha M, a gynecologist, who has served in Kozhikode and Palakkad, says most of the women who have abortions are married, and roughly 75% fall within the 20-30 age group. While most couples prefer to limit family size to two, some couples with two sons opt for a third child due their desire for a daughter, and vice versa. Muslim women often have more than two children. Religious taboos impact the woman’s decision to avoid some or all forms of contraception.
Women tend to conceal the fact that they have inserted copper-T, often requesting the doctors not to tell the accompanying relatives. Dr. Rekha adds that doctors are often reluctant to perform or recommend abortions, while the women concerned have absolutely no qualms.
Here comes a shocker! Both Dr. Divya and Dr. Rekha state that when women discover an unwanted pregnancy they often resort to over-the-counter drug purchases in order to induce miscarriage. While the success of these attempts is invariably hushed up, the failures are evident when the women seek medical intervention as a last resort.
The hospital then has no option but to perform an abortion as there is a strong possibility that the drugs ingested would have harmed the foetus. Estimates from China indicate that 13 million abortions were performed in 2008 and 10 million abortion pills were sold. Whether the government of Kerala has similar statistics is anybody’s guess.
Russia legalized in 1920
Believe it or not - abortion has been practiced worldwide for thousands of years. It was condemned by all religions but nevertheless had distinguished advocates like Plato and Aristotle. Today abortion is legal in many countries, illegal in some and controversial everywhere. The first country to legalize abortion was Russia in 1920 under Lenin. The United States waited until 1973 when the Supreme Court pronounced its path-breaking judgment in the Roe vs. Wade case.
China gradually liberalized its abortion laws staring 1954 and introduced the one-child norm in 1979 (which it scrapped in 2015). India under Indira Gandhi passed the MTP (Medical Termination of Pregnancy) Act in 1971 legalizing abortion and specifying the situations where it is permissible. The consent of the woman is mandatory. If the girl is a minor, parental consent is required. Very soon we had an abortion-on-demand scenario, but the law took care to protect the unborn girl child by outlawing sex-determination tests.
(Author and IT professional)
Children? Whatever for?
Someone from the Bharat Mata brigade has been advising Hindu women to ‘go forth and multiply’. Now that’s what I call ‘the devil quoting the Bible’ instead of the Bhagvad Gita. My dear man, do you know what it feels like to carry that extra weight around in your pot-belly for nine long months? Do you have any clue about the intensity of labour pain? Or are you going to pay for my epidural?
You’re right when you say the pain doesn’t last a lifetime.
But who’s going to breastfeed the squealing infant every time it announces it insatiable hunger to the world at the top of its lungs? You? Who’s going to clean the urine and feces every now and then? You? Who’s going to stay up all night when the little bundle of delight chooses to stay awake? Who’s going to prepare the special foods that babies need? Who’s going to teach the little devil to walk, talk, and do its homework? Who’s going to pay the school and college fees? And when the parasite grows up and walks away, who’s going to wipe my tears? You? Yes, my dear man, the pain might well last a lifetime.
Why should I care how many Hindu women are left on planet Earth a 100 years from now? I know for sure I’m not going to be around. I’m not even certain homo sapiens will be around, given the holes in the ozone layer, global warming and all those things politicians and environmentalists are endlessly talking about. The way we’re going about destroying it, the planet itself may go up in smoke. I just hope it doesn’t happen in my lifetime.
We need to bring down India’s population to half a billion in 25 years - and the world population to 3 billion. That can happen if 50% of the world’s women refuse to reproduce and the other 50% adopt the one-child formula. (Now please don’t do the math. I didn’t. I was just shooting from the hip.) In the meantime the men will continue killing each other and placing bombs at crowded locations. From each according to his ability!
The religious zealots who advise us to have more children should consider tackling the dowry menace, child marriage, female foeticide, female infanticide, trafficking in women and children, domestic violence, rape and child abuse, before making wanton recommendations about birth un-control. As for me, I’m headed for that abortion clinic. It’s legal!
When does life begin
The Islamic and Catholic nations have been insisting that abortion is tantamount to murder. Such a value judgment presupposes that life begins at the point of conception. But does it? It may be argued that the spermatozoa are alive, and hence using a spermicide also amounts to destruction of life. The ovum, the spermatozoa and the embryo have no independent viable existence outside the human body. We have invented cloning but we are yet to design an incubator that can nurture the embryo for nine months. The human embryo is a therefore a parasite in the woman’s body – not necessarily that of the woman who supplied the ovum. Any female body can play host. (How I wish a day would come when male bodies are chosen instead!)
Do women have the right to refuse to nurture the fruit of their own conception? And is it sinful to say ‘Sorry, not in my body!’? Can the state compel an unwilling woman to bear an unwanted child? While suicide and mercy-killing are illegal in many countries, people condone these incidents when they do occur. Abortion, however, is still frowned upon, if not condemned altogether. Is it because the ‘crime’ here is perpetrated by a woman?
Our concern for the embryo often surpasses our concern for living children. The state and society do very little to prevent neglect and abuse. In the third world, infants starve to death because their parents are unable to feed them. Is it better to destroy life in the womb or should we allow the infant to be born, only to die slowly?
It’s also interesting that while the destruction of life is often questioned, the callous and indiscriminate ‘creation’ of life goes unchallenged. Breeding without responsibility is not considered a crime against humanity or an offence against the state. Is this because a male privilege is involved? At the heart of the anti-abortion campaign lies the masculine fear of total loss of control over reproduction. The pill has already tilted the balance of reproductive power in favour of women. When abortion is universally available, the control of creation will fall into women’s hands. This has already happened in Kerala and in the Indian metropolises, not to mention the developed world.
It is estimated that several million abortions take place in the world every year. Millions of women are prepared to risk their lives in illegal abortions rather than carry unwanted babies. These faceless, voiceless women are not represented at international forums, but their choice is crystal clear.
In a truly free society, women should have control over their own bodies. A woman is not an incubator. Behind every decision to abort lies a woman’s indescribable anguish. Abortion, in the final analysis, is a hard choice between two evils. To bear an unwanted child is the greater evil.
