Abortion is mostly seen with a moral lens and people seeking it are judged by the same moral compass. But isn’t morality subjective? This section tries to clarify some myths and misconceptions about abortion. We dream of a world where an abortion is as normal a medical procedure as possible and this is the first step.
A married woman, Satya* tells Vice India that while she wanted the abortion, her husband did not and their doctor made it worse by using language that perpetuates stigma. She says that her husband judged her for coming to the decision of abortion so easily.
Studies suggest that married women also face confidentiality issues, lack of awareness, and stigma. According to a report published by CEHAT, a research centre that publishes papers on health themes, in the experience of 60 per cent of married women, doctors providing abortions insisted on the husband’s permission prior to the procedure, and 28 per cent said this was true in government and private hospitals. It should be clear that this is not a mandate under the MTP Act.
Prerna, 28, is a producer with an English entertainment channel in Delhi. “Because I live with my parents, I had to find the farthest possible clinic to get an abortion.” Prerna was working on a documentary on yoga at that point and was in a relationship with Satvik, who is the same age as her and also a media professional. “When I told him about the pregnancy, he freaked out. He told me that he wants to rethink the relationship since he didn’t expect it to reach ‘that’ level.”Nevertheless, Satvik took Prerna to a clinic.
The doctor, a woman in her mid-50s, asked, “Are you married?”
“No,” Prerna replied.
“Do your parents know about it?”
“No,” said Prerna.
“It is because of you girls that parents don’t want their girls to go to college. Did you not think of them? How could you submit to a man like this?”
Since Prerna’s pregnancy was detected on time and the foetus was just four weeks old, she managed to abort it through pills. “I felt ashamed later. Almost guilty that a lot of women cannot have a baby and here I am popping out one,” says Prerna. “I also felt that though this gynaecologist is well-known, she is probably good only for married women. Don’t unmarried women have an anatomy to deserve a medical right?”
Mitra, a 20 year old woman, found out that she was pregnant in the second year of college. Mitra had heard of acquaintances and friends undergoing abortions and had researched abortion pills online. Armed with that knowledge, Mitra went to a pharmacy and bought Cytotec, an abortion-inducing drug sold for Rs. 32. Misoprostol—the generic name of Cytotec—cannot be legally sold without a doctor’s prescription, but it can be easily bought under the counter, as was done by Mitra. She followed the instructions to keep the tablets under her tongue for 30 minutes and started bleeding within two hours. Over the next two days, she missed college due to heavy bleeding and nausea, and later experienced morning sickness. She thought that it was an after-effect. A week passed like this.
Her friend spoke to some girls in her PG accommodation and suggested a clinic in Nangloi. In the Nangloi clinic, the first question the doctor asked her was if she was married. She says, “He saw my mangalsutra and asked me ‘Are you really married?’, to which I had to confidently reply in the affirmative. I made up a story about how my husband is travelling and that’s why he couldn’t accompany me.” An ultrasound and a pelvic examination later, the doctor confirmed that she had an incomplete abortion because of pills she had taken before, and that infection had set in. He recommended surgical evacuation. “He said the only option to get rid of it was through some vacuum aspiration method which would cost Rs. 10,000.” This was a big amount for Mitra as she is economically dependent on her parents but could not have asked them to help. She somehow managed to collect the money from her pocket money and by asking her friends to lend some. After the surgery, “I was let off after half an hour in the operation theatre. For the next two hours, I was hallucinating," she says.
A month later, she got a call from a courier company to confirm her address. Within an hour, a police officer with two women constables landed up at her house in Noida. The Nangloi doctor had been arrested a week earlier under the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act for conducting sex-selective abortions. Mitra’s number was found on the doctor’s phone. Mitra was not allowed to go back to college. Her father didn’t speak to her for a month, till she started experiencing heavy abdominal pain and excessive vaginal bleeding. A proper diagnosis revealed an infection in her fallopian tubes: damage caused by the irresponsible surgical procedure performed by the Nangloi doctor. Mitra will never be able to conceive. She was forced to switch to the school of correspondence courses in Delhi University. She and her younger sister are hardly let out alone.
On the face of it, abortion is legal in India, unlike in a number of Western countries, but women have hardly any control over their reproductive future. What happened with Mitra is an example of how much female sexuality is controlled, moralised, and stigmatised. The MTP Act fails to define terms like “abortion”, “miscarriage”, “termination of pregnancy”, “health”, “substantial risk”, and “seriously handicapped”, making the doctor’s opinion sacrosanct. Mitra's case may give the impression that the problem is limited to women who are economically dependent. However, this is not the case.
