“This is a catholic country”.
With
these five words from the doctors, Savita Halanappavar’s fate was
sealed in the Dublin hospital where she was admitted in the last week of
Oct 2012. Suffering from severe back pain, she was
discovered to suffer a miscarriage of her 17 week pregnancy. Yet , every
doctor who came to check her told her that as long as the foetal heart
beat was present, the abortion could not be carried out because of the
country’s catholic beleifs . It did not matter to the doctors that
Savita was neither Irish by birth or citizenship nor Catholic ,nor the
foetus couldn’t have been revived by any means.The supreme court of
Ireland had already ruled in the favour of terminating the pregnancy in
case of any danger to the mother’s life in 1992 (a ruling which had not
been implemented by the subsequent Irish governments).The 31 year old
Indian dentist withered in agony for four days and by the time the
remains of the foetus were removed, it was too late. Septicemia had set
in and the blood poisoning rendered various internal organs useless. She
breathed her last on Oct 2012. At the time of writing, the Irish
embassy in India has assured of an impartial probe to be carried out.
Before
blaming the Republic of Ireland, one has to take into account that if
there were a few medics of mayhem, there were also hundreds and
thousands of Irish citizens who protested strongly for this unpardonable
death of a foreigner in their country. It was therefore, poor taste on
the part of a few imminent panelists on an Indian news channel to give
the colour of racism to it. Nothing can be farther from the truth. This
is not about being Hindu or a Christian or a European or an Asian.
This
is about the damage caused by organized religious code which in a few
countries, vehemently refuses to adapt itself to the modern world. The
unfortunate Savita happened to be in one of them. And if the Irish
doctors applied these parameters to a Hindu woman who was not a citizen
that led to her death, what must have happened to countless Catholic
Irishwomen in the name of upholding the “word of god”? And how many more
women are in danger if these archaic laws are not relaxed?
The
Vatican has always reiterated its opposition to abortion and even
contraception because it interferes with “God’s will”. Missionaries too
toe their parent organization’s line, the most famous of them, the
Albanian nun popularly known as Mother Teresa talked about outrightly
banning both abortion and contraception (The likes of her saw poverty
and suffering as god’s will too instead of scourges which must be
eradicated. A senior Republican politician had said that even pregnancy
caused by rape is god’s will, a comment which was rightly condemned
wholeheartedly in his own country. In all of the largely Christian
western world the debate between pro choice and pro life continues
unabated.
Since
the last two centuries, the hold of every church has diminished over
its adherents. Young people across western world are by and large living
their lives as contrary as possible to what the church has been
preaching for nearly two millennia. The church’s views on putting an end
to contraception, abortion, women working, divorce and even
homosexuality find hardly any takers among the young today. Add to that
the various child abuse cases around the world involving priests
happening every now and then, and the picture becomes even murkier.
While
it is true that feminism has brought forth untold horrors in the name
of free thought and progressivism like promiscuity and misoandry , the
biggest damage done by it has been the break up of the family system and
the blatant misuse of the pro choice argument . It is not at all rare
to find the so called progressive woman in western societies who kills
her unborn child due to her desire of a free life without family
obligations, her career or simply because the pregnancy is a result of
one of her numerous adventures. These are the very women who are the
most cacophonic and vocal about “a woman has a right over her body and
she can do whatever she pleases with it”. A woman does have a right over
her body, but to use this as an excuse for a promiscuous lifestyle is
disgusting beyond comparison. Aborting an unborn child just in order to
have a “free” life or just because it is a result of a fling is nothing
less than slaughter.
On
the other hand, the talk of pro life has no meaning if it endangers the
life of the to be mother due to birth complications or condemns a
victim of rape to go ahead and have the child which would remind her of
the trauma every moment from thereon. It also has no meaning
when it discourages the use of contraceptives as it is seen in the
poverty stuck abnormally large families across many conservative
societies around the world. It is often sad to see incurable patients living a life worse than death because pro life does not allow the termination of life in these cases.
It
is upto the society to decide whether religious views and laws are more
important than their safety or their very lives. When someone’s well
being or safety is made subservient to some code of conduct, then the
time has come for self introspection by every individual in that
community as it is an indication that something is seriously wrong with
it.
Pro
life argument is meaningless if it endangers or denigrates one life in
the favour of a dim possibility that the other life might sustain. That would just be a pro existence argument. Pro life just doesn’t mean in favour of not letting something perish.
A real pro life philosophy will mean that everyone has a right to a
free, healthy and dignified life, where no one would be subservient to
any self appointed representatives of morality and ethics. Freedom that
costs life is not freedom at all, but a life which costs freedom isn’t a
life at all either.
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