There is an app that can help you track your periods. It’s really useful when you need to make travel plans or when you end up having unprotected sex so that it can give an alert when you are late. Imagine you are sitting in a board meeting, trying to figure out what you will speak when your turn to present comes and suddenly, the app alerts, “YOU ARE LATE”. Depending on whether you are pro or anti childbirth, your mood can change to being elated or depressed and if it’s the latter then you can just forget about the presentation and walk out of the board room making some mensuration excuse (men usually buy-in whatever excuse you make citing “female problems”, they just never want to get closer to it).
Having a child in your life in today’s world is not a choice, it’s really driven by a lot of factors like your age, your physical health, your financial situation, your relationship with your partner and not to forget, your mental health. I’m not pro or anti abortion really, I have a kid myself and I don’t judge people who either want to have 10 kids or those who don’t want any. Whether the supreme court allows abortion or bans it, the decision really doesn’t concern me because I’m past the stage of having anymore children (physically I still can but mentally I’m done).
BUT, I do have one tiny problem, why is abortion not discussed openly as any other medical procedure?
If you are suffering from a physical problem that requires medical treatment, say for e.g. kidney stone, would you hide it from everyone and book an appointment in some shady clinic and never talk about it. If you needed to apply for a leave in your office to get a “root canal”, would you hide and just say, “I need a leave for personal reasons”. Why then abortion is a taboo and women are not allowed to talk about it? Why cannot we apply for a leave and mention the reason as “Need to go for abortion”?
As a woman, I would definitely like to have the right to decide whether I want to have a child or not but more than that, I would like to have the right to be able to talk about it openly. Recently, a friend of mine was faced with a tough decision of choosing whether she would like to opt for a pill or an in-office procedure to handle her situation. When she told me about it, she whispered the word “abortion” as if it was a crime and she was afraid that someone would hear about it and arrest her. She literally kept looking left, right and behind, trying to find anyone who looked like eavesdropping on our conversation.
In medical terms, abortion is one of the least risky procedures, you walk-in to the hospital, get into the operation theatre and walk out of it in an hour or so. These days, they don’t even make you stay the whole night, they send you home with instructions to call if you feel any side symptoms. In most cases, you can go on and have a normal Saturday night fun with drinks, if you can get past the emotional toll it takes on you.
No matter how modern of a woman you are, seeing the two pink lines on a pregnancy test and deciding whether to keep the child or not is not an easy decision. It might be an accidental pregnancy and you just cannot go ahead with it because it was conceived in the backseat of a car after your highschool prom, you know that you need to opt for abortion but still I don’t think any woman on seeing positive result says, “oh dear, I would need to call the doctor and get it over it”. Every woman on this planet, when they come to know they are pregnant, for a brief period, fantasizes on how it would feel to be a mother.
So, if a woman decides to opt for abortion, it’s always a tough decision for her and it doesn’t help when she is not allowed to talk about it openly. For a long time, mental health was a taboo in this society and we spent decades creating a space where people can talk about a problem as common as depression. I think it’s time we allow that space for women too, so they can at least discuss it openly without feeling like a criminal.
