Abortion Laws in Alabama Is a Global Issue
Please avoid reading this if it’s a trigger for you.
I apologise for the language, I may have (definitely did) snapped.
This essay is purely based on my emotions and thoughts and was the result of my mere need to get this all out somewhere. I understand abortion is a very, very complex topic and this piece of mine is a drop in the ocean.
If you have a contrasting opinion, let’s have a healthy discussion in the comments.
Abortion was a concept that snaked its way into my life rather early. It was presented to me as something women do in my society to avoid giving birth to daughters. Even if women didn’t abort their unborn daughter and the family accepts the birth of the child/ grandchild, side eyes are still exchanged about how it’s a girl. It was for this reason and this reason alone, that I was extremely pro-life for the longest time. Then I got older – I’m talking about close to adulthood because this was not something taught in schools or sex education – and I started coming across concepts like “threat to the mother’s life” and “the baby doesn’t have a chance of survival even when born”. I started to hear about how women got unexpectedly pregnant, because of the “nothing bad can happen” naivety of the young, or because it was forced upon them. About how they didn’t want to carry the guilt or the trauma. I started to understand the value of an abortion in these women’s lives.
And the more I heard these women’s narratives and reasons for their abortions, the more I developed a clearer picture of the most ground-breaking realization – a woman can get an abortion for whatever goddamn reason she pleases. So novel, I know. But listen, it took me over 20 years to wash out the awful taste of the patriarchy from my mouth so please bear with me. I started to understand that it’s not a woman’s (including my) responsibility to birth every egg in her body just like it’s not a guy’s to make sure every sperm becomes a – oh, wait a minute. Wrong argument. Circling back, I came to understand that nobody is palling around and getting abortions with their girlfriends like how they get a pedicure or some brunch. They do it like how people break their leg or cut off their arm to get out of a situation they are trapped in, even the women I abhorred for destroying a foetus simply based on its chromosome – the guaranteed end goal of survival outweighs the possibility of this foetus’s chance at a heartbeat. And I started to develop a much healthier attitude towards the concept of abortion. I am proud to say I’m now pro-choice. Little late to the party, but better late than never, I sincerely hope.
Which brings us to the issue of the abortion laws in Alabama. It’s been a week and I’m still seething. And if you’re like my friend who said “Thendral, why do you care? It’s in (country name). It’s not Singapore” when I was all fired up talking about the state of women’s reproductive rights in another country sometime back, let me tell you why.
I was born in a developing country, and for the longest time, I had to tolerate the ridiculous attitude developed countries displayed towards us even though it irked me to no end. I had to put up with the endless parade of documentaries and critiques that were often presented by a white person with neither context nor attempt to understand what living in the society they’re discussing is truly like. Assuming that the living conditions and philosophies of their countries can simply transfer over. Acting like the enlightened vegan that looks down on the meat eater. The audacity to have the arrogance, moral superiority, and entitlement to tell and comment on how a society, a country, should be living, and how it should fix its problems. While the countries that they originate from were invariably riddled with their own issues – gun controls, a trailing sense of colonial supremacism, drug problems, etc, etc, etc. I had to sit there and watch the descendants of people who raped a country and its women, construct the narrative for it as the rape capital of the world. I had to listen to them advocate for what women there could do for their rights like they had the faintest clue what the social structure there is like. “Why don’t these daughters in law just stand up to their mothers in law who coerce them into an abortion?” That was something I heard on TV from a white woman. My reaction? “WHY DON’T YOU MARRY INTO AN INDIAN FAMILY SUSAN (don’t think that was her name)? SEE HOW THAT FUCKING GOES.”
And then here we are, in 2019, witnessing the ban of abortions in a state in a developed country that boasts itself as the greatest country in the world. A country where the critics I spoke about were from, on their desperate missions to save women in third world countries from a first world perspective. A country that has one of the WORST maternal mortality rates in the world. A country where pregnant women are shot, and children are separated from families in camps because the colour of their skin precedes their worth and simple validity. The icing on the cake? The non-exempt for rape and incest. My insides still curdle when I think about this ruling because it has been WELL documented that hatred, anti-immigrant sentiment, and white supremacy has been on the rise at a global scale since Trump’s inauguration. While we knew that these attitudes are not confined to the USA, the red hat was the perfect segue for such attitudes that were under wraps to come out and take the spotlight. Christchurch taught us that in the most devastating way possible.
For god knows what reason, people still look to the USA for its actions. Countries still look to the USA for its actions. And then they model their behaviour accordingly. Which is why I’m genuinely petrified about how abortion laws and sentiments against abortion can evolve from here because let’s be honest, it’s FAR from acceptance in most countries. It’s considered as a no-other-option. NOT a woman’s choice. I worry about the attitude towards it in my home country where foetuses are still not given the chance to be born simply because they are female. Where the Indian government’s step to circumvent this issue so far was to deem it illegal to disclose the sex of an unborn baby. I am scared if and how these laws would change. I am horrified by the statistics on female infanticide despite such a law and so, I am scared for the daughters yet to be born, and their mothers who don’t want to go through this. I don’t know if anyone actually listened to those armchair critics’ decades worth of opinions on women’s rights so far. But I’m scared the rules in this one state will ultimately be perceived as an American attitude, festering the anti-women attitude that has already been begging to bubble over the rim in many countries.
Because at the end of the day, these abortion laws are not about “being pro-life”, they are just about society controlling its power over women. If you don’t think the abortion laws are anti-women, this is a snapshot of what the guy (I refuse to give him a name) who sponsored the bill to ban abortions in the Senate said during last Tuesday’s debate:
· "I'm not trained medically so I don't know all the proper timelines, but I have been told there is some period of time you can know when a woman is pregnant."
· "There's a window of time when a woman knows she’s pregnant that every option that's on the table now is available. She has to do something to know whether she's pregnant or not. It takes time for all the chromosomes to come together."
· And the money-maker, i.e., how these laws are about women, here’s his statement on whether eggs are human life and can be subjected to an abortion: "The egg in the lab doesn’t apply. It’s not in a woman. She’s not pregnant."
Zooming out from the Senate, only when talking about women’s rights will you see ridiculous headlines such as “Alabama abortion ban: Should men have a say in the debate?” from “reputable” news media such as the BBC. You will NEVER see this about any other “problem” in the world ever. Forget switching it with religion, let’s stay on the topic of binary gender. Can you imagine the crucifixion if someone, especially a woman, wrote: “Vasectomy rights: Should women have a say in the debate?” Which ironically, can fix the root of the "problem" of abortions. And while we are at it, here’s a headline for you to construct an actual and important story on: “People can miss their period simply because they worked out twice a week this month instead of once a month. Should we take research about how menstruation goddamn works more seriously?”
So yes, these abortion laws in Alabama, USA are a global issue because it’s not just a babies-being-born issue, it’s simply proven to be an opportunity to exacerbate how little women are still perceived in the world, even in a developed society. It's an opportunity for societies to follow suit by aggravating their anti-women behaviour, just like they did with all other hatred behaviour, simply because it's the case in the USA. And so, I’m mad about this crusade against women. It’s no different than the Salem witch hunt so I’m fucking mad. And I’m going to stay mad. I feel violated on behalf of the women of Alabama. I’m not going to get over this. Instead, I choose to educate myself, form better arguments, and vocalise my anger. Is this going to get everyone on the side of women? No, of course not. Does it seem like a bleak effort? Probably. Will I stop trying? Never. I will damn well not stay silent.
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