First of all, many thanks to all of you who left comments on my previous blog… given the volume, it’s clear we have a highly debatable matter on our hands.
After reading each comment, and after careful thought, I have decided to stay with my opinion, yup, at the great risk of being perceived as a rabid bigot.
Let’s examine the core argument: It’s the mom who’s left holding the baby, the rest of us will vanish in time, so only the parents should decide: Yes, we already have. The media for instance is already ODing on the Olympic winner, Nikita has disappeared completely. And that’s to be expected, especially given the superficial media we have created in this nation (and I am a part of it). But that still doesn’t change the fact that the issue concerns the nation at large, you change the law for one individual, it changes the world we live in. While there are compelling arguments put forth… that why must parents give birth to a potentially unhealthy child and suffer along with it for the rest of their lives… the hard truth is that I HAVE seen in my lifetime babies with serious heart problems go onto living perfectly reasonable lives. Sure, some won’t, but we can’t say that for sure, so why not give life a chance? My worry is with the obsession of today’s parents to produce the so-called perfect child, cos that is a myth. Forget physical disabilities that show up later, what about the mental sicknesses some people are born with? Ergo, WE CAN NEVER BE SURE what we are bringing into the world, so why not give nature a chance? Finally, having seen such cases from close quarters, there is no greater joy in life than helping turn around the life of a challenged child. That joy is far greater than any professional success. Using tech to abort dicey fetuses to me is a cop-out, a loser attitude. And yes, the law will be mis-used by people, we are like that only. As someone pointed out, millions of female fetuses get illegally aborted, and there’s zilch we can do about it. Look where technology has got us, and now we want it to cause further damage!
Mind you, I am not against tech per se, I am not some hard anti abortion campaigner. But tech should be used to make our lives better, to heal us, to treat us. And not to kill an individual’s right to live, just because the unborn has no say in the matter. When we choose to produce babies, we have to accept there’ll always be that element of risk, but we gotta live with that. Sorry, but I am not the sort of person who runs away from problems. If that makes me an old fash, tech challenged relic, so be it. Perhaps my mom would have aborted me if tech had told her I would turn out to be such a fossil.
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8 comments:
Dear Anil,
Your optimistic outlook towards life is commendable.
But, the way I see it, the core issue here is about deciding if the foetus is in fact an individual.
And also about individual liberty.
I don't think a foetus should be considered as an individual with rights which override the mothers rights.
If fertilization is viewed as the birth of an independent human life,
1.There is always a risk when engaging in sex if you are not planning for a child,
as contraceptives can fail.
2.It would mean that pills taken after sex is an attempt to murder.
I am sure you would understand the ways in which these factors would add adversely impact the society.
The many famous researches on abortion by leading economists in the US should should stand testament to this fact.
Beyond these practical points, I don't quite get the conceit/arrogance with which people can assign the no of weeks beyond which a foetus should be considered an individual.
As long as it is totally within a human being,I don't see why we should ignore her right to lead her life without the foetus.
Her aborting the foetus is not anyone else' business.
There should obviously be scope for contractual obligations with her partner(like pre-nups) or with others (if she is a surrogate parent, etc)
Debates should probably revolve around making laws clearer around those grey areas.
We must be careful about the line that divides debating on values and forcing our judgment on others.
Crossing this would pave way for intolerance in other spheres of life too.
That would be a dangerous path for any society.
-Shankar
Finally nature has taken care of the whole thing as far as Nikita is concerned.Or is it the media? now the same media is debatig the reason for the miscatrriage....is it stress? Media is asking and contemplating..Anil I join you in this hiyuk hiyuk....media did what they could do to Nikita and now it is Abhinav darling.Happy Independence Day. Jai Hind.
not sure why people think of "nature" as some benevolent, caring, compassionate mother. Nature actually culls. Ever seen an old lame zebra/deer or any handicapped animals in lower food chain survive?
physical/mental disable humans get to live a possibly decent life because of technology. like it or not - we are genetically wired to desire physically perfect human babies. Its thousands of years of evolution taking its toll. We are changing as a society to accept humans with disabilities but it will take time. You can't correct a social problem with law. We would have eradicated dowry deaths,cast discrimination, domestic violence from India if social problems could be solved with making laws against it.
Well nature did take its course, since Nikita suffered a miscarriage and the doomed baby is no more. Life will go on for the family...of course the trauma of not wanting a child with defects (coz the child might not have survived), then preparing themselves to face the fact that they to live with a child with defective heart or some other handicap and now losing the child again. No one can perhaps relate to their trauma.
I believe the issue has more gray shades to it because we are a nation where female infanticide is really high. If a law allows for a parent to abort if a child is not 'healthy' then rest assured suddenly we will have a lot of 'defective female babies' being aborted. Even if tests were required to prove the defect, a bundle of note under the table will ensure the reports are in order, facilitating the procedure.
But I also believe that abortion is a helpful aid in a billion people country like India. So where do we draw the line?
Another point is, if the birth of child of over 20 weeks will cause fatal results for the mother, then should the abortion still be refused? Suicide is illegal so if the mother insists on delivering the child despite the risk of death, can that be allowed?
hi all,
well, the baby's gone anyway, but left behind a legacy which will stay with us forever, he/she hit at our legal system, our social fabric and our collective conscience.
at the risk of sounding like a daadi maa, my hunch is the baby found out how unwanted he/she was in this country and decided to back away. sad.
absolutely anil the child must have felt so rejected that decided to give up. secondly her husband says she was stressed out and so she aborted...why did she put herself under all this stress, she shud have accepted the pregnancy and both mother and baby wud have been fine...
anil,
till now i had some respect for what you said and agreed with you to a certain extent.
but don't you think you're wrong in mentioning nikita alongside the girls who just wanna have fun on dandiya nights?
and to top it all you say the baby felt unwanted and backed away!
how far are you going to go with this personal assault on somebody who decided to take on the law for something she believed in.
forget about being in the media etc, but what kind of a human are you?
i agree there is an issue with legalising abortion. sure people will misuse it. but you don't have a right to thrust your opinion on nikita. or speak for her child.
and no, i dont' know nikita from eve.
After all this fracas that was raised, i sometimes wionder what would have happened had the baby survived full term- Imagine growing up to realise that you were not wanted in the first place by your own biological parents; that u were born only bcos the law of the land wanted you to;and worst of all the whole damn world knows that you were not a 'desired' child.
Imagine the trauma the poor kid would have gone thru. Quite ceratin that the kid wouldnt have had a normal childhood or for that matter been a confident individual on growing up.Feel sad for Nikita and the kid as well but maybe all's for the best. I know this deviates from the debate but it just set me thinking......
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