The Reproductive Rights of Women
The decision of whether to bear a child or not is best left to the
conscience of the mother, says VENITA COELHO
Two recent articles in Herald (26 Dec & 9 Jan) loudly equated abortion
with murder. To call an abortion 'murder' is to use very strong and
condemnatory language. The argument of the self righteous who use these
terms is that to abort a child is wrong because life begins at the
moment of conception. Consider this: in-vitro fertilisation has been
lauded as a huge boon for childless couples. Yet all the fertilized eggs
that are not used as part of the procedure are routinely thrown away.
They are fertilised and therefore by our definition 'alive' - yet no one
is taking to the streets to protest this as murder.
The difference is that in this case we are dealing with a test tube and
the woman is missing in the equation. The abortion debate is well
camoflagued by the use of terms like 'murder' 'rights of the unborn
child' and 'pro-life'. But it has little to do with the child and
everything to do with the woman. The thinking that underpins all the
claims that abortion is murder actually very simply sees the woman as a
container for a foetus. It sees the unborn child as having a 'right to
life' and it ignores the fact that the woman carrying the child has a
right to her life too.
For centuries a woman's entire life was dictated by the men in it -
first her father, then her husband, and finally her sons. Child widows
lived in unimaginable misery. Women had no right to property or to the
choice of a husband. The black shadow of this history of horrors still
lies across the lives of Indian women. While many of the social customs
have been eradicated, the beliefs still exist. And the prime belief that
still persists is that women are property.
Traditionally, being property themselves, women could not inherit
property. This belief was so persistent in the church and in India, that
as recently as 20-odd years ago, Mary Roy, Arundhati Roy's mother, had
to fight a court case to get inheritance rights for Syrian Catholic women.
The law recognizes the right to property and encourages you to defend
it. But the very first property that is yours is your body. We condemn
arranged marriage and encourage a woman to exercise her right to choose
a husband - because her body and her life are hers. We condemn rape
because a man makes forcible use of a woman's body against her will.
Then why do we condemn a woman who decides whether she will host a child
in her body or not? The body is the first thing that is hers. Surely her
will should be sovereign in matters of her own body!
There was outrage when the Indian state began to forcibly sterilize men
and women during the Emergency. Their fundamental reproduction right was
violated. Their privacy as people was violated. The opponents said that
the state had no business to be making reproductive choices for
individuals. A right is about choice. An equal right is the choice not
to be a parent. Equally, a state has no business making abortion illegal
and taking away from women her reproductive choices. A woman denied the
choice by law is as much of a victim as those forcibly sterilised.
Why is this choice so important? Because willy nilly women bear the real
impact of a pregnancy. Roe vs Wade is a landmark case in the history of
the fight for abortion rights. This is what was argued: "A pregnancy to
a woman is perhaps one of the most determinative aspects of her life. It
disrupts her body. It disrupts her education. It disrupts her
employment. And it often disrupts her entire life...because of the
impact on the woman this is a matter which is of such fundamental and
basic concern to the woman involved that she should be allowed to make
the choice as to whether to continue or terminate her pregnancy."
In what became a landmark judgement, the US Supreme Court ruled that a
woman's right to abortion outweighed the rights of a non-viable fetus
and prohibited state interference. The Court noted: "Enforcement of the
idea that the fetus has legal rights superseding those of the woman who
carries it would make pregnant women second-class citizens with fewer
rights, and more obligations, than others."
In our country where, despite the fight for rights, women are de facto
second class citizen, an unwanted pregnancy can devastate a woman's
life. When a woman is unclear what her own future is, when she is held
back by illiteracy, by lack of money, by lack of employment, what is the
point of condemning her and insisting that the unwilling bear the unwanted?
Much of the indignation that infuses the argument over abortion comes
from men. What business have women got deciding that they will not carry
a child? That is a woman's work isn't it? What she was born for? What
her organs are designed for? What god made her for?
This brings us back full circle to viewing a woman as a container for a
foetus, not as a full-blown individual who has rights of her own.
Biology is not destiny. You should be free to make your own destiny
whether you have a set of ovaries or a Y chromosome. Just because you
are equipped to bear a child does not mean that you should be forced to
do so against your own inclination. Using social and religious
condemnation to make a woman feel guilt over her choices is merely
blackmail. To label her a murderer is to try and give a medical choice
the spin of religious condemnation.
By using the term murder you condemn mothers, sisters, daughters, your
own near and dear ones. An unwanted pregnancy is the dilemma that almost
every woman has faced at least once in her life. It is something that
women agonize over. An abortion is not an easy choice. It is made in
guilt and torment and secret sorrow. And almost always it is a bad
choice made out of an option of even worse choices. It is a choice that
strikes at the heart of your physical existence, of your morality and
the well springs of your life. But it is a choice. One that for
centuries was withheld from women by their husbands, the state, and
sometimes their religion.
If we now recognize that a woman is not the property of a man, then the
choice of whether to carry a child in her body or not is also hers. If
we recognise that the state has no business interfering in the private
matter of personal reproduction, then the choice is a woman's alone. And
it is high time we recognized that religion has no business imposing its
choices on the body of a woman.
Conceiving a child and holding it in your body is a deeply intimate
meaningful thing that only a woman can understand. And only a woman
knows what a deep sense of sadness and loss she will then carry when she
has made her choice. But the choice is hers and hers alone. The decision
of whether to bear a child or not is best left to the conscience of the
mother. (ENDS)
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First published in the Herald, Goa - January 16, 2010
http://oheraldo.in/newpage.php?month=1&day=16&year=2010&catid=14
