Essays

The debate on abortion and the role of a liberal law in a country like India must take cognisance, at the very least, of the provision of general health care services. With about 73% of India's population living in rural areas, the provision of free, rational and universally accessible health care is crucially important at all times to all people (which includes the women who experience morbidity following abortions). However, the foregoing review shows that basic health care services, leave alone abortion services, are beyond the reach of many. Moreover, the 'conveyor belt' approach that most approved centres adopt only ends up making abortion services insensitive to the women who demand them.

For a liberalised law to be effective in providing free, safe and humane abortions on demand, it needs to be accompanied by other social inputs like greater empowerment of women especially  in their control over their bodies and their sexuality. In situations where women have relatively better control in decision making and access to contraception (for example, countries in Eastern Europe which provide extensive and reliable data) liberalization is accompanied first by a rising trend in the incidence of induced abortions which stabilises after a point and finally declines once women improve their skills in avoiding unwanted pregnancies. . This has not happened in India.

The knowledge that liberalisation has failed to bring down the incidence of illegal abortions, to improve the health of women and the fact that it is tagged to the population programme, has bred a fair deal of scepticism among some Indian academicians. Through a presumed belief in the accessibility of abortion services as a natural consequence of liberalisation, they believe that women have increasingly been pushed into utilising these services. However, statistics reveal that legalisation has not significantly increased the rate of legal abortions.

Further, by doing away with legalised abortion services, can a given society reduce abortions and can that automatically improve women's health? Historical and contemporary evidence demonstrates that it is not possible for the state to achieve complete control over women's bodies through its employment of technology, legal prohibitions and repression.

The dilemma expressed by the sceptic highlights the limitation of treating abortions as a civil right for individual freedom and privacy. Legality provides only a thin cover, a political legitimacy that is necessary but not sufficient to change those material conditions of women's lives. Firstly, it makes it possible for anti-abortionists, under a conservative political climate, to juxtapose the civil rights of the unborn child with the civil right of the pregnant woman. This has happened in the U.S. Opinion polls on the issue of abortion since 1973 show that Americans are deeply ambivalent on. the issue of abortion. More than two-thirds consistently say that although they believe abortion to be wrong and immoral, the ultimate decision should be made by a woman and her physician rather than by a government decree. Anti-abortionists attempt to translate the conviction that abortions constitute 'an act of immorality' into government sanctioned legal restrictions and have been fairly successful in juxtaposing the civil rights of the pregnant woman with those of the unborn child.

Secondly, a civil right to abortion does not amount to a social right which is accompanied by all the necessary enabling conditions that makes it concretely realisable and universally available. Further, a really safe abortion is possible only by embedding abortion services in a full range of social services-health care, pre-natal care, safe child birth, child care, safe and reliable contraception, sex education, protection from sexual and sterilisation abuse, etc. These social services must function under the organised vigilance of women's groups to ensure that women do really get access to such services.

Moreover, abortion is not merely an issue of political and legal conflict but of social, cultural and moral conflict as well. Good social services expand the scope of what is meant by 'women's reproductive freedom' and are, therefore, of utmost relevance and urgency. However, this could result only in a partial or total shift in child rearing responsibilities from women to men and ease the burdensome aspect of motherhood (through improved benefits and services).

No decisive changes can be brought about by measures aimed at women alone, but, rather, the division of functions between sexes must be changed in such a way that men and women have the same opportunities to be active parents and to be gainfully employed. This makes women's emancipation not merely a women's question but a function of the general drive for greater equality which affects everyone. The care of children becomes a fact which society has to take into consideration.