“The Case For Both Pro-Life And Pro-Choice”
18th May 2010, in Rants (9 Comments)
Editor’s Note: Njoki Ngumi presents her view of both the pro-life and pro-choice arguments – arguments that have come to the fore of Kenyan society because of the upcoming referendum on the Draft Constitution. What do you think?
“If the anti-abortion movement took a tenth of the energy they put into noisy theatrics and devoted it to improving the lives of children who have been born into lives of poverty, violence and neglect, they could make the world shine.” – Michael J. Tucker
“I was stunned when I saw on the ultrasound a tiny, living creature spinning around in my womb. Tap-dancing, I think. Waving its tiny arms around and trying to suck its thumb. I could have sworn I heard it laughing.” – Madonna
I had an experience while I was in school that really made me rethink my stand on this matter. It was late, close to midnight and a seventeen year old girl came into casualty, well and truly sick – vomiting, vomiting and very, very feverish with a foul, foul vaginal discharge. With a Stink that was holding a one-way express ticket to high heaven.
Sister furrowed her nose, made those “there’s a bad smell” wordless exclamations that only middle-aged African women can make, you know. The ones that communicate hatred for the Smell, disbelief that something can smell so horrid, and utter disdain for the source of the justly maligned Odour.
She then filled the room with air-freshener, and it was infinitely more disgusting to mix the already deathly Smell with that of violently murdered flowers canned for the sake of commerce – then she threw up her hands and yelled, “I can’t do this today!” and left dramatically, slamming the door – leaving me, the doctor, the patient, her mother, her other seven-month old child and Smell-from-Hell alone in the room together.
By that time the patient – through her shivers – had told us a fantastic tale about how that Smell came as an allergic reaction to her contraceptive injection two days before – we ignored that blatant lie. The doctor – a very tall, very dark man who’s usually quite the teddy bear – frowned a scary frown upon her and shook his fists.
The truth came pouring out once we had kicked (grand)mother and infant out of the room.
She was seventeen, with another child out of wedlock and her mother was already taking care of that child (the same pair of people we’d just kicked out of the room). So when she discovered she was pregnant again, she felt that she really couldn’t take that story home again. She went to a backstreet clinic and a hanger was untwisted and used, then she went home convinced the problem had gone away. Then the sickness descended and she tried to hide it.
But then came the Smell.
One has no words to say about that sad, sad, sad event. Many people can argue that she was irresponsible, and she should have known better, but the facts remain, and they were Smelling all over the place. Who could honestly come to her at that point in time and tell her what she should have done? In this, our society which frowns upon publicly-admitted abortions and at the same time frowns upon young, unwed mothers (especially this one, who didn’t seem to have learned any kind of “lesson” from her past, whatever the “lesson” is supposed to be)?
After that, I really started to think about what pro-life and pro-choice actually mean.
We are led to believe that pro-lifers are activists for morals and for the life of the unborn; a tiny, vulnerable someone who cannot fight for him or herself. Their usual saying is that you and I were not aborted, so why should we take away someone else’s right to live? That life is not a decision we can make because it’s not ours to give.
Their opponents say they are violent, patriarchal fundamentalists with no real understanding of real life or of the need for family planning, or of the horrible things that can happen to a woman to make her pregnant. “What about rape?” they ask, “Incest? Pregnancies resulting from abuse of women who are mentally challenged?” They are accused of using pressure and coercion and guilt trips to get their point across.
The pro-choicers on the other hand, see themselves as agitating for a woman’s right to decide what should be done with her body. She doesn’t have to be pregnant if she doesn’t want to be. Pregnancy -with how it can weaken and sicken the body – should never be forced upon someone. And they say that that is another choice used by men to put them down, and that men cannot really have a say in the matter as they will never understand where the woman is coming from.
Women have to leave school and jobs and recover from pregnancy and childbirth and then be depended on for years, and that can have all kinds of negative effects on her person. The pro-life movement have labeled the pro-choicers as heartless, amoral murderers, pagans, feminists and people out to make money from a child’s blood.
So there it is.
On principle, I fall on the pro-life side of the debate, but I asked myself the other day, when I remembered the unfortunate 17 year old, “Isn’t it unfortunate that the Church – perhaps because it falls so close to their docket – acts as though they own the pro-life team? It’s a ridiculously incomplete picture. Who doesn’t want happy, healthy children around? Happy, healthy children are indicators of a happy, healthy society; of happy, healthy living.
So if you desire happiness and health for yourself and the generations after then you, my friend, are pro-life, whether you like it or not. And why must a life be protected only when in-utero, and be completely unshielded when it’s delivered into this harsh, cruel world? Mothers are single more often than not because the fathers have denied responsibility for the pregnancy.
So why aren’t we fighting for legislature that would make it easier for women to get child support? Laws that would give women time to take their children to the clinic when they get sick? Laws that would allow a woman certain allowances – if she can prove she is entirely without support – to take care of the child? There are a million ways all the above can be misused by the unscrupulous, but there are a million ways anything can be abused by the unscrupulous.
And why would the Church demand that a woman should keep the pregnancy while ostracizing her and talking badly about her, leaving her deeply scarred for life? Being a mother is one of the most difficult things that any woman will ever have to do.
The fact that the pro-life squad only cares about the unborn – to me – is one of the deepest kinds of hypocrisy. Pro-lifers must also ask themselves, what do we think should be done with prisoners of war? With the old and the infirm? With prisoners on death row?
Why, indeed, must women raise babies if they don’t want them? There are plenty of baby-less families roaming the earth, looking for babies to love…and a glut of unwanted babies in some corners of the world.
I do know that some of the stories about post-abortion traumatic stress disorders, infertility, feeling haunted by past decisions, infinitely deep regrets, depressions, psychoses and suicides are documented facts. The human being, and the woman by default, is a creature that is composed of mind, body and that intangible thing that goes away when you die; the soul, the spirit. The termination of a pregnancy is not just like pulling a tooth. It rends life from life and cannot possibly leave one unscathed.
This is not a decision that should be made under pressure from boyfriends who are not ready to be fathers, from society’s expectations, and with rising levels of hysteria, yet those are usually the circumstances under which it is made. A woman should be empowered to choose long before she gets pregnant, she should be equipped with the understanding that she is much more than “just” a potential baby-making machine.
She can choose to say no to pressure to have sex with anyone, especially people in positions of authority using sex for barter trade. She can learn self-defense. She can choose to use contraception if she doesn’t want to get pregnant, and there should be a provision for her to learn about different methods and choose what fits her best. And she should be allowed to be sad and vulnerable and scared and doubtful when she gets an unwanted pregnancy, without being judged and pointed fingers at.
So in that sense, I’m both pro-life and pro-choice. I don’t want anyone to have to die; the baby, or the misused woman, but I also don’t want anyone to be backed into a corner and be lied to that they have the choice to either live or be lived for. Refuse the lies, mwananchi, that a death of some kind has to occur.
9 Comments
May 18, 2010 10:57 pm
Angela Kabari
Njoki you have spoken well! This is the best and most honest discussion on abortion that I have heard / read in this entire consttution debate.
I have heard so many disturbing stories about how rampant abortion is in Nairobi. In fact a campus classmate of mine openly told me that she curently has 5 abortion doctors number’s on her phone with price range of posh private clinic to one in Dandora.
Obviously abortions are happening daily, illegal or not.
I do agree that the better solution is not to persecute the pregnant woman /girl but give her viable, accessible and especially financial alternatives before and after the pregnancy!
Well said my dear!
June 9, 2010 2:51 pm
City Girl
Lovely piece Njoki.
I am actually fully pro-choice, but i do understand the argument on pro-life. The one thing i really cannot stand is the pro-lifers lording over everyone with this holier than thou attitude yet behind the shadows they are some of the worst culprits effing sinning left right and center but to then your sin just seems a little more (or maybe a load more) grave than theirs….SAME DIFFERENCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I actually agree that we need to be a people of more action and less talk…helping the ones who need us e.g. pregnant teenage girls rather than ostracizing them!!! This same society is the reasons those girls choose to go down those path of abortion.
Its amazing in some European countries where abortion is legal, very few women actually do it…why?? because they have the knowledge on contraceptives, about their bodies, their right to say no to sex…or simply use a condom… and thus are able to make informed decisions. Yet we here in Africa (narrow down to Kenya), walk around with veils on our eyes pretending like no body is having sex…but this is happening at younger and younger ages with the passing years.
Then comes the argument on the constitution….pro-life my **** the same constitution is allowing death sentence (currently also in the constitution but not enforced) and yet i hear no one making noise and yet here you are taking away a life of a living breathing (outside the womb) human being. And everyone is sssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh about it. Really!!!!!!!! Do i really need to say anything more!!
We do need to look at things quite like you have Njoki, from all angles and understand where each side is coming from before we pass judgment on anyone and various issues affecting our country.
Tully, we human beings always seem to see the mistakes in the form of specks in another persons eye yet we cannot realize we have a whole log in ours!!!!!!!! Enyewe KUWENI SERIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!
June 15, 2010 4:48 pm
Grace Kihumba
Hey Njoki,been a while!
I think that being both pro life and pro choice is a square circle. A choice necessarily means exclusivity, preferring one thing to another.It’s not a grey ambigous area, it’s a choice to keep a baby or kill a baby…hence the square circle.
So perhaps pro choice is a nicer way of say that I’ve made a choice, I’m just afraid of the baggage that comes with it.If that ‘baggage’ is worth your suffering, then you keep the baby.You’re pro life.If the ‘baggage’ is not worth your suffering, then you get rid of the ‘baggage’, you’re pro abortion.
Truth is a really simple thing, because it is one. If there were several truths, then necessarily all but one of them would have to be lies.There is no relativity about truth.Pro choice tries to make this a possibility,to say that abortion is right or wrong depending on me.
Firstly, truth doesn’t depend on me.I don’t create reality,I find it when I come into the world. I take it,or leave it,but I don’t change it. Reality is that I don’t have absolute rights over parts of my body..if I tried to commit suicide and failed, I’d get arrested. Reality is also that a baby is not a part of my body, it’s another body, with a different DNA from my leg.
There is no hypocrisy in stating the truth. Arguing that we should first take care of the born before the unborn is simply shifting the argument,not confronting it. I could give countless examples of those who take care of the born, the countless Children’s homes that noble people have set up.They don’t trumpet it aloud, so we judge that they do not exist.
My point? If we lose our sense of awe and wonder at a new life, then there’s no way we can retain our love and respect for existing lives.That’s the reason why many countries that are pro abortion are also pro-euthanasia. They didn’t respect it at the beginning. They can’t respect it at the end. How do you prove that they’ll respect it in the middle because of policies set up by a government?
The very term pro choice speaks of a decision.A choice to stand for the truth or to convince myself that there is no truth, because truth is what I want it to be. There are no multiple truths. It’s a square circle.
July 5, 2010 2:15 pm
Weslie
I’m with Grace. It’s important that we respect human life right from the get go. It sucks that something as beautiful as life could come from such vile circumstances as rape But the harsh reality is that it happens. Deciding about the life of an unborn child is pretty much the same as deciding on the life of your neighbor. They could be the most evil, horrible excuses for human beings but if you didn’t put life in them and as such you really have no right to take it out. We definitely need to put in legislature and take care of those already born and living outside the womb, we definitely need to make sure that the child we are protecting in the womb will have a life worth living once they get out but like Jesus said to the pharisees once “these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.” (Matthew 23:23) Let’s not lose our focus.
July 5, 2010 3:32 pm
Stevo (@Twitter ID)
Njoki, i must say you are indeed SOBER….the pro-life, pro-choice debate is too abstract if you ask me. The realities of life are not captured in these mindless debates, at the end of the day when a lady decides whether or not to undergo an abortion she will literally have had conversations with God and with the devil. And i believe no written law in the constitution will play into her decisions, it will all come down to the facts around her…can i feed this child, can i afford to bring a child into my misery, can i live with the reminder of being repeatedly raped by the person who fathered me…and other unspeakable facts, these are the things that will guide her decision. In the absence of support systems to help her deal with these realities, whether we call it illegal or not she will seek for and have an abortion.
Then there are those who do it coz they can and their dark conscience doesn’t hold them accountable, they too do not consider the law..and whether the law exist or not they will still do it. Countries like Brazil with a very strict abortion law, sees up to 300,000 abortions in a year…so as we stand on our podiums and shout pro-life or pro-choice we need to consider the facts.
And no matter how much we try to box in our laws at the end of the day the society is dynamic and 20 years down the line the constitution as we know it will have changed significantly. The proposed law on abortion is to me a very realistic stepping stone. It considers practical situation that do and have arisen, without negating the fact that life deserves respect. For those saying it cant be amended if it turns out to be the “horror” they have prophesied, i say 1million signatures is a drop in the ocean if you are serious about changing a law.
We need to focus our energies into re-educating our generation, making them more aware of the consequences of their actions and providing support systems to “mop up the leaks”. The church must be on the fore, advocating for this re-education and support systems. You can only set a man free by showing him the way not forcing him to walk the way. If he choose another way he still remains a free man, only a prisoner to his conscience.
July 5, 2010 6:35 pm
N O
Njoki Ndungu says: “The fact that the pro-life squad only cares about the unborn – to me – is one of the deepest kinds of hypocrisy.”
That quote really says alot about this writer, what she thinks of pro-lifers, and her blanket statement that pro-lifers only care about the unborn?
Sad but typical – I am not surprised!
I will not say more!
July 10, 2010 1:16 am
sahara
Nice article Njoki.
Empower people with true and accurate information. (I am not referring to religion when I say TRUE)
What they decide to do thereafter is absolutely nobody’s business.
However, they need to be reminded that their actions are not inconsequential (no matter how informed or empowered they may be).
August 3, 2010 10:53 am
Edel Kung’u
I completely agree that every human being should have a right to decide what is right for them. I am a firm believer in pro-choice (whether abortion, contraceptives, etc).
August 18, 2010 2:18 pm
r2d2 (@Twitter ID)
I have to come to the defense of the church, even though I am not really the evangelical type.
The church isn’t being hypocritical in what they do. The church, is simply stating what they believe in. Preaching and telling the masses what is true (what they believe to be the truth – as Grace says) is infact their mandate.
@ City girl – It is very true that people in the church also have abortions. But that really isn’t the point of discussion is it? The church basically tells you what is true. It is up to you to choose. Those members of the church as themselves human beings, and they can decide to turn away from the truth. So I don’t think analyzing their actions will be very fruitful. Even popes will sin sometimes.
@ Angela Kabari – I am interested in knowing how the conversation with your classmate concluded. Did you help her? You realize the girl is probably on a really fast road to serious trouble, right?
Lastly, @ Njoki Ngumi – I think that in the end, we cannot really sit on the fence and say I am neither here nor there. In the end, we will all need to take responsibility. I imagine at that moment, the pro-choicers will need to give an account for the choices they made. Perhaps they will have a long line of little babies lined up behind them, asking why. I know, i know… this thought is a little sensational, but we never know who is reading this, and how our words could influence your formative minds reading this blog. I think you could be an amazing activist. I only wish you could be on the side of truth though.
Leave A Comment
Posting your comment...