What would you do when a woman in your life is pregnant and a delivery cannot occur without it costing her life? What would you do when a woman you love most is pregnant against her will, and is not wanting to bear the child? What if she goes to a place that puts her through an unsafe method of abortion on her, and she loses her life? What would you do when the people that you seek out to help you, the people around you, mock at the woman and tell you that she deserved what she got?
Would you be angry?
Of course you would ! You should be !
The response to enforcing SRHR, be it legislative, policy or activist in nature, has been largely band-aid solution-oriented. Every instance of “action” being taken has been simply a tool to address simmering anger superficially, and once the furore dies down, we’re all back to leading our lives as though nothing happened. Ironically, we ask what the authorities are up to when a similar incident happens again, when we were fast asleep ourselves. Here’s what we’re losing touch with: the lack of change at the grass-roots level.
Let’s start at the top. SRHR in India is still to arrive at a place where women are respected enough. What we need to start with is to effect change at the local level – by shifting mindsets and making people realize that women are not threats, but are important for our existence. We need to institutionalize the thinking that women are not to be treated in a way that they have no autonomy over their own bodies, and that they are not to be perceived as anything less than human beings with an equal status to men.
The brazen disregard of the status of women relegates them to the position of second class citizens. This sets a sort of a chain reaction in process, as women find themselves forced to suffer in silence without access to healthcare, education and justice, simply because there is no security for them. Girls can’t go to school because the route to school is peppered with sexual harassment and what India calls “eve-teasing”. Once they reach school there are no bathroom facilities and they drop our once they start menstruating.
Women can’t access healthcare because there are either no facilities at all, or the only ones that there are, are effectively placed with barriers of many kinds in between. Girls and women cannot speak out against any of this because of the perennial sword of Patriarchy hanging above their heads.
Just think about it: while we’re looking at unsafe abortions for what they resulted in vis-à-vis the woman, demanding that there be a change in the mindset towards women concerning the rights angle, there’s a whole different mindset that’s being ignored. Unsafe abortions are a crime. Letting our women seek those methods out by not providing safe methods is a crime. Every crime needs an enabling environment, and unsafe abortions are no different.
What we need is attention to the finer points before we look at the big picture. No one cares about the littler cogs in the wheel that actually keep it moving – and instead try to stop the wheel from turning, getting trampled in the process. The easiest way to stop a wheel is to pull out the linchpin, especially if it’s derailing a vehicle downhill. We have a duty to find that linchpin, and not keep bricks in the path of the wheel – bricks that can be removed allowing the wheel to roll all over again.
