Day Two began with a unique challenge: our participants were asked to draw the male and female reproductive organs. This might sound like a science test, but it was really Dr. Suchitra Dalvie’s means of getting them to talk about contraception more comprehensively. After an hour, Dr. Dalvie plunged into the topic of the day: abortions.

These sessions were a learning experience for me too. I’ve always wondered how you go over the alpha and omega of abortions. Where do you begin – with the laws, the ethics behind it, or with the procedure itself? Do you address country-specific barriers? Do you talk about women who need abortions, women who have had them? Each of these is important, but you can beat these to death, and still not arrive at an answer that helps provide safe, legal, affordable abortions for all women.

I was mulling over this as Dr. Dalvie, and then Dr. Shilpa Shroff addressed the procedures, the laws, and the barriers of safe abortion. But as we began our post-lunch session on what it means to be pro-choice, I suddenly realized that it’s not about finding the answers, but about learning to ask the right questions.

As pro-choice activists we are hoping to make reproductive choices available to all women. But we would lose the argument if we claimed to know what each of these women wants, and set out to find those exact solutions. In setting out to subvert a patriarchal system, we would have become just as patronizing as those who argue for it.

In fact in the post-tea session, we saw just how demeaning it can be when someone claims to know what you want. As a group we watched the first half-hour of the maddening documentary, Unborn in the USA, where the filmmakers show a bunch of “pro-lifers” trying to convince a rape victim that the abortion she had was wrong. They claim to understand her pain and her guilt, though she herself displays nothing but relief at her abortion. It moves on to show several such scenes, where pro-lifers accost people claiming to help them, and fix their lives.

We wrapped the day with discussions on the movie. What do you say when you someone accosts you with a pre-defined “message” (from God, nevertheless!) and claims to know how to help you. I guess you ignore them, or laugh about it. Because at the end of the day, we don’t want to take the bait, and start throwing generalized statements that will help women in a way we think they want to be helped. Instead, we are trying to break away from pre-ordained solutions that group people together, generalizes their issues, and inadvertently stifles individual voices.

Today at the workshop, we move on to communication. Hopefully we learn how to ask questions that empower people around the world, goads them to think, to question the laws (religious or state-imposed) that bind them, and essay the changes they want. Hopefully, we’ll learn how to let people tell their own stories, and challenge a system that claims to know the answers and solutions to everyone’s needs.

You can take part in the discussions and write to us anytime. We are planning to tweet updates from the YAI using the hashtag #ASAPYAI. We are also posting photos to Facebook, and report to our blog!

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