DO pregnant women have a right to an abortion or is this decision solely in the hands of authorities?
Last month, the US Supreme Court made a ruling that eliminated constitutional protections for the abortion procedure, sparking outrage from pro-choice groups and shrieks of joy from pro-lifers.
As the Supreme Court has the final legal say, the only grounds left for debating the abortion ruling are moral.
For decades, religious conservatives have pushed for the complete prohibition of abortion. But on what moral grounds rest their argument, and is it a firm ground?
Conservatives, who are facing challenges from progressive voices, believe that every fertilised human egg is a person having the legal right to live.
Even if you are a rape victim, bear the monster’s child as it is an innocent soul that wants to be born.
Alabama, Texas, South Dakota and Missouri states have already restricted abortions even in cases of rape and incest.
It is a misinterpretation of sacred wisdom to believe that a human being starts life at conception, and this belief can be faulted.
If you are already nine months old at birth, why do you get a birth certificate and not a conception certificate? Should the national census count every foetus as well?
A 10-day-old embryo is nothing like a human being, not even a very primitive one. Up to day 22, the embryo still has a tail.
So if life as an individual starts at conception, we should be registered as monkey-men and not as human beings.
Pro-choice author Dr Willie Parker wrote in his memoir five years ago that life is a process.
“It is not a switch that turns on in an instant, like an electric light.”
To say that life begins at conception is to treat the sexual act as a switch that turns human life on when a sperm and ovum unite.
Before conception, there is already life as every sperm and ovum is also alive.
If a foetus is to be regarded as a person from day one, then every sperm and ovum must be regarded as a half person awaiting completion.
Your brain starts to develop in week four and it is only around week 24 that it reaches full pre-birth development.
It is at this time that the foetus becomes viable with the possibility of independent survival outside the womb.
Hence, two years ago India made the compassionate decision to permit abortion for rape survivors and trafficking victims up to 24 weeks, the borderline point.
The relaxation was intended to save these vulnerable women from endangering their own lives.
Early this year, Columbia legalised abortion for up to 24 weeks.
Australia permits abortion up to 16 to 24 weeks depending on state legislation.
In 2020 and 2021, Argentina and Chile legalised abortion up to 14 weeks of pregnancy respectively.
It is around week 14 that the foetal brain gets active and starts to direct some bodily movements.
Last year, Mexico’s Supreme Court voted unanimously to decriminalise abortion to reduce the suffering of women in a country where females are violently treated.
Ireland ditched its previously strict abortion laws in 2018. Why did Ireland, a bastion of religious conservatism, turn the law around?
In 2012, a woman who was 17 weeks pregnant died of septicaemia after she was repeatedly denied her request for abortion on strong medical grounds. The reason for rejection was the presence of a foetal heartbeat.
Her death sparked off massive street demonstrations, and parliamentarians began to realise that the pro-lifers’ stance had led to a situation where the survival of a foetus became more important than the life of its mother. In the end, both the mother and foetus died. Particularly obnoxious is the lack of compassion for pregnant children.
In 2018, Indonesia sent to jail a 15-year-old girl who had an abortion more than 40 days after being raped by her older brother.
In 2015 a 10-year-old rape victim in Paraguay was denied abortion and children demonstrated in the streets to protest the decision.
Unbelievably in 1998, a 10-year-old pregnant rape victim in Brazil had to wait for a judge to convince the religious authorities to back off so that she could have an abortion.
Adult married women may also have sound reasons to want an abortion.
A 27-year-old poor Kenyan housewife with three children was assaulted by her philandering husband and forced into sex.
She became pregnant and because Kenya permits abortion only in cases of a medical emergency, she went for a backyard abortion and died.
Pro-lifers brush aside the fact that many women in most countries are treated as sex objects, subject to continuous abuse or kept in servitude.
Malaysia’s abortion laws allow no exception for rape or incest. Abortion is permitted only if a doctor believes in good faith that the woman is being endangered by her pregnancy.
When abortion is almost completely prohibited, the result is often tragedy.
Early this year, a 15-year-old girl in Terengganu stabbed her newborn baby to death.
She was obviously a rape victim because Section 375 of the Penal Code defines sex with a girl under 16 years of age, with or without her consent, as rape.
In Perak, a 16-year-old girl threw her newborn baby from the top window of a double-storey house onto the roof of a neighbour’s house two years ago. Fortunately, the baby survived.
The girl had either been raped if she was underage at the time of foetal conception or was coerced or seduced.
The nation recorded 652 cases of baby dumping from 2015 to June 2020, with 65% found dead.
If the law allowed victims of rape, coercion or seduction to abort, these tragedies would be avoided.
Four years ago in El Salvador where abortion is completely banned, a 20-year-old rape victim who gave birth prematurely and abandoned her baby had to spend 18 months behind bars.
Many young single women get pregnant because they are scammed into having sex.
Although the culprit is a male, it’s the woman who gets penalised for being forced to deliver a baby she doesn’t want.
There is no guaranteed safe place for young girls, so long as men behave like predators.
Last year in West Java, a religious teacher raped 13 students and got eight of them pregnant.
In Butterworth, a religious teacher was charged with raping two sisters whom he tutored in his home.
Most victims of rape or coercion want an abortion because the pregnancy is a daily replay in their minds of the brutality they had to endure and it is a visible sign of the oppressor’s triumph.
In wartime rape, captured women are kept imprisoned until near the time of delivery to signal the conqueror’s might.
To be forced to give birth despite such circumstances implies that the survival of a foetus is more important than the well-being of its mother.
It sends a message that women’s primary role in society is to provide sex for men, give birth, raise children, and do slave work. It downplays the tragedy of rape.
The writer champions interfaith harmony. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com
