Even as a teenager when I stumbled on the terms Pro-Life and Pro-Choice I found them perplexing, but trust Americans to come out with such phrases without putting in any hefty thinking and processing, as in sitting in a study room with wood-panelled walls bearing towering book cases. Not that a Stanfordian locale is needed to reach to reason but…but simply to conjure a cogent venue. One can do the rational straight-thinking in your neighbourhood pub! Fast-forward eons of years later and referring oneself pompously as a Pro-Life or a Pro-Choicer goes down the gullet as smooth as warm white wine. Toe-curling speeches from both sides are enough to bring on high levels of acidity! Pro-Lifers, as we know, delivering their volcanic lectures, with such forceful conviction, causing foamy spittle to coagulate, symmetrically so, on both corners of their chapped lips. (Cracked lips and parched mouth breeding on account of intemperate venting!) Pro-Choicers giving it back as good as they get—not that they have not been marching their own parade, with placards a far-sighted person with window-thick lenses could see, without cocking his eyes or craning his neck…
So we all know Pro-Lifers, believe at all cost, that for a woman to go in for an abortion come what may, is not an option for her to exercise. Life is God’s gift—full-stop! Simply put: one may already have two or three little Pumpkins and adding to the brood economically not an affordable possibility. Physically speaking, with children, one has to be always on one’s toes—for better or for worse—and the body may not be in the position to handle yet another cherubic face but collapse by all means, ending up in the hospital, daresay even institutionalised, but birth one has to give! The gynaecologist, early on, might have detected some kind of defect in the foetus (pardon me, the word here is baby) and the medical diagnosis and concurrence would be to terminate the pregnancy. Bringing knowingly into the world an infant with cerebral palsy, Down syndrome etc.
Or a conception generated, produced, and fostered because of a rape incestuous or a wayside forcible pillaging violation? How can, demand these Pro-Lifers, one even give a graspable thought to killing a fellow human being?! Only self-addicted, born-’n’-bred whiners would think of perpetrating a dark, devilish operation of this nature?! Morally vacuous murderous mothers -to-be! Then the Pro-Choicers (me not a card-holding one, but my quiet understanding tells myself that this would be the only stand, if one has to take one!) believe crying hoarse that a woman’s body is hers, and what she does with it is her business. That does not sound pretty, but paraphrased, it means that for A, B or C number of reasons, the lady does not want to give birth so be it.
Here, however, I must clarify that in my opinion, one cannot irresponsibly get pregnant and then think nothing wrenching the foetus away; it may happen once on account of youth, ignorance, or both, but have known some cases where going in to get cleaned-up might have occurred a few times because one cared not to remember one’s cycle or perhaps, not taken the required precautions. A B-grade movie that I had seen a dozen years ago, so much so that cannot recollect the name of this film comes to mind. Tag it as B-Grade not because of its storyline and non-descript actors but since it had a soap opera feel—backlit sub-characters to ensure that the viewer knows that they are an integral part of the saga, cameras zoomed in on faces to capture the expressions so as to save on camera reel to showcase, however shoddily so, different angles, the polished and sheeny texture of the setting. But no more meandering… There was immense atmospheric orchestration to the flick so an attempt shall be made to film the synopsis by with a focussed twitter finger: Die-Hard Pro-Lifers, fanatically but of course, in herds breaking into an abortion clinic as if they had just been let loose from an asylum, straight out of the cuckoo house, to chain the mothers-to-be to the bed, as in forced bed-rest till the baby pops out, while lynching the doctors, saw-toothed instruments to arrest those hands, finish them off, so further discontinuance of life can never take place. Sample these Banners—Atheists for Life, Feminists for Life, Prison for Life. Now what became of these infirm women—many who were threatening to painfully miscarry and needed immediate medical intervention before leaving behind, perhaps one or more, freshly orphaned child? Or what about that girl, who was yet to turn 13, and after being repeatedly raped by her father had conceived? The freakingly strong defense made by him: she was too big for her age, and bore a striking resemblance to her Mum, and thus the confusion in the identities and so he believed he was purely exercising his conjugal rights! This, a movie but fact, as is known, is stranger than fiction.
Now to bargestorm to Ireland where abortion has been illegal since 1861, punishable by life in prison: 31 year old Savita Halappanavar’s multiple organ failure succumbing to a cardiac arrest since she, in natural course, was going to have a miscarriage, a spontaneous abortion, due to a septic 17-week old foetus. The doctors treated both at par adhering to their sacred law.
In 2013, “The Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act” was passed post Savita’s uncalled for death.
Dr Renée Ranchan writes on socio-psychological issues, quasi-political matters and concerns that touch us all