Termination in the offing

America! The country where so many of us aspire to go, carve out a life where one has success, currently called psychic income, a bulky bank account brought in by a sky-scraping salary, a huge house that boasts of a four-car driveway, a swimming pool at the backside. No, this is not describing Priyanka Chopra’s Beverly Hills mansion but houses of doctors, architects, computer engineers, entrepreneurs, and yes, even professors (who might even charge a bomb for delivering a lecture at some Corporate Convention)! Of course, here have to hasten to add that the good old U.S. of A. doesn’t simply embrace immigrants or their very own, with open arms, giving them readymade jobs that metamorphose into careers.
One has to work hands on, start from scratch, adopt a work-ethic that is altogether absent in say, our very own `desh’, where one would die of shame if spotted by a neighbour buying a jhadoo, broom. These menial jobs are for the maids, I was long made to understand. This time around, I intend to fasten my seat belt and head straight to the destination, instead of characteristically so, halt here and there, like a passenger in-transit relishing the rounds of duty-free window-shopping or settling down at a café, taking in the soft sunlight bouncing off the wall-to-wall glass windows! So, America it is! Looked up, admired for being a progressive nation, one that honours the ideas, thoughts and lifestyles of others.
Where one can agree to disagree and yet be friends. For existentialism exists not for dinner table talk; the oration maybe as compelling as the devil’s spell since one has been reared to think one’s own thoughts, and so can outright be thrown out of the window. Beelzebub, Old Nick stand no ground. So then for Heaven’s sake, what in the name of the Lord, is the storm unleashed on May 2nd, 2022?! A legal document, intentionally leaked out by God knows who, stating that abortion soon will become illegal. If implemented—which seems more than likely—it shall strike down the Roe vs Wade ruling of 1973. Here Roe, the legal pseudonym for Norma McCorvey, a 22 year old mother of two, had pleaded that she wanted to abort the third child—the foetus, the product of rape. This, in the state of Texas, where abortion was illegal. Eventually, the Court’s ruling went in Norma’s favour, making Roe vs Wade (the District Attorney) a landmark judgment.
Of course, there are always clauses—after the first trimester of pregnancy going in for abortion would be putting the mother-to-be’s life at risk, and to brush aside the Roe pronouncement, if early on it is detected, the embryo was suffering from some serious ailment or defect, which once born, would be a life of serial suffering, then it falls under the moral purview to abort. It would, would it not, be a grave injustice, knowing full well that the yet-to-be-fully-formed-baby (foetus) is suffering from Down’s Syndrome and yet bring it to the world?! Sarah Palin, who was running for the Vice President of the United State of America in 2008 did just that! Well, the expressions Pro-Life and Pro-Choice were coined long back and are self-explanatory.
Pro-Lifers are vehemently against abortion. Pro-Choicers believe that a woman has every right over her body, and if, for whatever reason, she cannot or does not want to have a child, the State has no say in her decision. Back to Sarah, who but of course, is a Pro-lifer, parading her baby afflicted with Down’s Syndrome on the Election trail?! Marketing Motherhood?! If this, to my perception is not appalling enough how would a woman psychologically, physically and in every way of the word feel in bringing, raising and loving (?) a child—the product of a gut-wrenching rape?! Or gangrape, where she would not even have the vaguest idea as to who the father was, and thereby, whose brains to blow out with the pistol she had illegally procured, after paying a pretty penny.
Would the thought not cross her mind to pull the trigger in all 6, or was it 7, of the monsters that took their roused-up rough turns with her. Instead of a gun, would she, had she had the physical strength prefer to purchase a dagger for castration. In such cases, is abortion not the only, sole route to take?! And what if the conception is the result of a vile uncle slipping into his niece’s room?! Incest…It is being speculated that if the Supreme Court in America strikes down the Roe vs Wade ruling, individual states would be permitted to ban abortion, if they so ordain. Therefore, it would not be a bolt from the blue, if the right to abort would be nowhere in sight in half of the States of America. Thirteen States have already passed so-called trigger laws that would automatically outlaw abortion. Given this screenplay would not pregnant women be jumping borders to States where abortion still was a legitimate right?! To visit an altogether different scenario: a woman may already have two or more children. There was no room for another.
The economic status of the husband and wife could not afford feeding another mouth. Even after taking precautionary measures, she had conceived. And again, suppose a woman, had no desire to be a mother, why should she not be licensed to make a choice when she missed her first period?! Would it be the right decision to have a child to go unloved?! Believe it or not, some women do not possess the maternal gene. Does this warrant prosecution?! The boat has reached its harbour, but before throwing anchor, one final matter: how is it that in broadminded America, women were `granted’ the right to vote a wee over 100 years ago—August 18th, 1920?! With a man—a person of eminence— high-mindedly pronouncing his theory for women to remain voiceless, “Are you not afraid that women would run into excesses, that homes would be deserted, that men would lack wives in this country?’’.
The Caveman mindset prevailing in full dress. Alive and kicking. In the early part of the 20th century, an American doctor had come up with a `cure’ for divorce-free married life. “Keep them barefoot and pregnant’’. Has America always been thriving in the Stone Age, and its modernization purely a veneer?!