Our Bodies, Their Decision

“No woman can call herself free who does not control her body.”?

The recent Roe vs. Wade judgment in the USA has created quite a stir globally, as it rightfully should. It has made us think about our country's sexual and reproductive rights and their implications on the woman’s body. Even though India has made significant progress with respect to women’s reproductive health, there are multiple gaps that need to be addressed.?

The burden of childbearing and taking care of one’s own reproductive health almost always falls on women. Women have only been treated as mere vending machines for bearing children and catering to others’ sexual needs.?

Some facts and figures to take note of:

• In India, 2 million adolescent women do not have access to modern contraception.
• Fifty-two percent of adolescent mothers have the recommended four antenatal care visits.
• Seventy-eight percent of teenage abortions are unsafe, posing an increased risk of complications.
• Following an unsafe abortion, 190,000 adolescents do not receive necessary care.

In this context, here is an article that you can read:

The ground reality is grim when it comes to the sexual and reproductive health of Indian women. There are policies and laws on paper but the implementation of the same is lacking. Only roughly 100,000 of the 4 million sterilizations carried out in the nation in 2013–14 were on men. In 2014, faulty sterilizing procedures in government camps in Chhattisgarh resulted in the deaths of 15 women.

The idea that sterilizing reduces men's virility and physical capabilities is a myth believed by many. These misconceptions are supported by a patriarchal culture that also undermines the significance of women's domestic work and unpaid labour. Only 0.3% of men undergo sterilization against 36% of women who undertake these family planning measures.?

Reproductive rights and reproductive justice

One thing that India has gotten wrong when it comes to reproductive rights is that its policies have been more focused on getting the population under control rather than ensuring reproductive justice to women. While we do use reproductive justice and reproductive health synonymously, we need to understand that in spirit, both are quite different.?

Reproductive rights focuses on the legal right to avail services and products related to reproductive health. However, reproductive justice focuses on the bodily autonomy, accessibility, availability, and other aspects like discrimination that women face while accessing their legal rights. Reproductive justice cross-cuts across various socio-cultural and political issues and is not limited only to the legal right.?

Read this article to know more about what reproductive justice is and how it plays a vital role in context of the present scenario:

Women’s health cannot be only limited to reproductive health

One major aspect that is missing from all these policies is that women’s health is not equal to only reproductive health. There are a lot of other aspects that should be taken care of when we are talking about women’s health. For instance, the NFHS 5 data has highlighted the increasing cases of anaemia amongst women.?

Despite schemes like Matru Vandana Yojana being in place, women especially married and pregnant women are anaemic and face complications during child birth. Moreover, government has still not extended the scheme of distributing folic acid supplements, which is vital for fighting anaemia, to non pregnant and unmarried women. Limiting access of such schemes and essential supplements only to pregnant women highlights the fact that women’s overall health is only limited to their ability to give birth.?

To read more about what the NFHS 5 says about prevalence of anaemia in India, check this link:

Barriers to women’s reproductive health in India

A report by Centre for Internet and Society has put forward pertinent issues when it comes to women’s reproductive health in India. Some of the key issues pointed out by the report are:

• Public policies pertaining to reproductive rights continue to place more emphasis on sterilisation than other forms of contraception.
• There is widespread under-awareness of legal abortion services and contraception among both the general public and healthcare professionals.
• It is a constrictive necessity to utilise an Aadhar card as a prerequisite of accessing medical services which is extremely restrictive.

You can read more about the key findings here:

Abortion rights in India

A modification to India's 50-year-old abortion law was passed by the country's parliament, but it does not lower barriers to access; rather, it raises them. Despite widespread calls for its elimination, the amendment maintains a detrimental policy requiring women to acquire consent from doctors for all abortion services, even in the early stages of pregnancy. This is true even as gestational limitations are increased. Additionally, the amendment institutionalises third-party authorisation for abortion care by introducing a new requirement for approval from a three-person board of medical professionals in cases of severe foetal abnormalities beyond 24 weeks, despite increasing some gestational restrictions.

Authorization requirements may make access to abortion care difficult for many women across India, particularly those who live in poverty, those who live in rural areas, and those who have experienced sexual assault. This is because of India's inadequate number and uneven distribution of obstetricians and gynaecologists, as well as its lack of facilities that provide abortion care, equipment shortages, and a weak health care infrastructure.

Check this article by Centre for Reproductive Rights to know more about India’s abortion laws:

Recommendations by The Wannabe Economist?

Something Like A War

When Deepa Dhanraj shot the documentary "Something Like A War" in 1991, she went inside hospital rooms where doctors boasted about sterilising hundreds of women every day while women who had received insufficient anaesthesia were held down and gagged to stop them from screaming.

The Vasectomist

Urologist Dr. Doug Stein hails from a small town in Florida. The controversial quest of "The Vasectomist" to preserve the globe by "promoting the gospel of vasectomy" is carried out. It is a trip through contentious themes that crosses political, religious, and cultural taboos. The movie sparks a fresh debate on population growth, excessive consumption, and the planet's environmental tipping point through this eccentric guy and his incredibly intimate encounters with males who are leaving the gene pool.

Forever Love

A short film on infertility and reproductive health issues.?

As a parting note, I leave all of you with one of my favourite quotes by Ruth Bader: “The emphasis must be not on the right to abortion but on the right to privacy and reproductive control.”?

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