-Rajvi Goradia, Youth Champion

It has been my strong belief that every woman present on earth or any other planet for that matter should have the right to choose what she can do with her body.

After attending the ASAP Youth Advocacy Institute and learning about the exact difference between unsafe and illegal, my desire to advocate for Safe Abortion Rights has increased all the more.

Why should any government body or a religious dictator attempt to force their beliefs on her??

Abortion is a taboo word in society which is what leads to its “unsafe” and illegal practices.

That is why women are forced to visit quacks who don’t care about sanitation, hygiene, even something as important as anaesthesia! That is why women are not be able to freely make a choice, without worrying about ‘what society might think’.

When she does make the choice, she should be able to go to any health practitioner and obtain a SAFE abortion without any unnecessary pestering or useless paperwork procedures which have nothing to do with her abortion. As a doctor, their first priority should be only and only the woman’s health and safety, which includes mental as well as physical health.

The issue not only lies in the taboo of abortion, but also in the gross misjudgment of having any kind of consensual sexual relations. Many women are forced to go through with an unwanted pregnancy because “Why did she have sex if she didn’t want to face the consequences?”

But, what if the woman used protection and did everything right on her part? Is she really supposed to live a life she never asked for or could be prepared for, just as a “punishment” for having sex?

So then she is forced to seek the termination of her pregnancy through unsafe means where the work will be finished undercover without any judgment or care. I, for one, believe that a woman deserves more than that. A human deserves more than that. No cluster of cells should be able to decide what an actual fully developed human being should go through.

A baby is so much more than just the 9 months of pregnancy that the woman has to go through. It’s an entire lifetime commitment. It is unfair to both the baby AND the mother to live a poorly led life just because she wasn’t given an option to choose whether to have an abortion or not.