|
“Abortion:
'If only I had known more", went the title
E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Ghanadot
February 9, 2009
Let’s get this idea out before
this discussion gets muddy. I am not a woman.
But as a man and at my age, I have had long
experience in the reproductive act.
This experience, to
be truthful, doesn’t come with the pain of gestating for
nine months, therefore this missive should not cover any
part of that region.
It will be absolutely
hypocritical on my part to pretend that “I felt” the pain of
childbirthing when my wife was in the process. I didn’t. I
felt stupefied by just being present.
And I have been stupefied this
way at each event of a total of three births. So much for my
experience. I have since then not missed or misunderstood
the wonder of womanhood and all its due credits.
But when I learned the BBC
described a supposedly “26-year-old Kenyan student who had
an illegal abortion at age 18” supporting President Barack
Obama’s lifting the ban on “US aid money going to abortion
counseling groups..” I felt the pro-abortion cause has gone
too far to a point that defiled common sense.
It is not a new knowledge that a
girl of 18 years could get pregnant after sex.
When I was about her age as a
boy, I knew about that possibility, and then of course I
also knew about condoms.
I had no knowledge about AIDS as
it is known today.
This knowledge has made the usage of condoms very
essential. So, an 18-year-old girl today, therefore, had an
additional reason to have used a condom.
She said she used a condom.
But “I was naive at
that time. We were using condoms but somehow I got pregnant.
I think the condom might have burst without me realising
it.” This was her
excuse and it could be true or false.
But what about after the act,
nothing informed her that the condom went burst?
Again, as a man, I was not part
of this act. However,
any man participating in that act with her will know the
moment the condom went burst.
Eight years ago, AIDS was
probably at its peak and growing worse in Africa. Surely if
she lacked knowledge about the risks of AIDS, she had the
opportunity then within her own environment to make her
aware of the terminal risks at stake.
And the risks should have
prompted her to have done a test immediately thereafter to
tackle the possibility of AIDS and/or pregnancy early enough
for safe abortion long before the BBC got wind of her
predicament.
In any case, she should consider
herself fortunate to have gotten pregnant instead of being
struck with AIDS.
But then she had her abortion.
“It was done in a hospital that performs illegal abortions.
My aunt told me about the place. Her daughter had had an
abortion there.”
Three, four, six months after? We don’t know.
But note that she bypassed her
parents for the expert advice of her aunt, a very reliable
“auntie” who would keep her condition secret from her own
mother or father, assuming that this "auntie" was related to
any of the two.
We should also note the culture
this now famous “auntie” was encouraging and spreading.
Her own daughter had undergone the same abortion
experience!!
It appears now that this famous
“auntie,” with the appropriate experience to have provided
the essential service, didn’t know enough at the time,
according to our 18-year-old girl, now a young woman who
will later state regretfully “Abortion: 'If only I had known
more'.”
Through her ordeal and later
confession, we still don’t know whether her parents were
informed of this “one” and only abortion of their daughter,
acting on the advice of a relative, an “auntie”, whose own
daughter had already undergone an abortion!
The rest of her story was a sop.
At the time of
writing, she claimed she was infertile due, possibly, to her
abortion.
“If I only known more about how
traumatic an abortion can be, I would have kept the baby.…
Better to be a single mother than be in the situation I'm in
now, where it's very hard to conceive. …Kenyan women are so
naive about abortions. They go to backstreet clinics to have
them and my neighbour died recently after having an abortion
in one of the bad places. …The best thing would be if
abortion were made legal in this country. …Abortion should
be the last option, but if it were legal at least it would
be done properly.”
First, note the deception:
"If I had known more...." Her mother could have told
her that. And if her 'auntie" had a reputation of
being a good "African mother" she whould have prised out the
risks of abortion.
Indeed, her whole point was an upkeep
for abortion and that it should be supported in Kenya by
American money.
Agents
in Kenya who depended on USAID money to provide for abortion
couldn’t do so, having been deprived of the means by a
previous US ban under President George Bush. The catastrophe
that befell the 18 years old was, therefore, the result of
this ban. Thankfully,
Obama had removed the ban, all will be well with the
abortion industry in Kenya.
Obviously, from the perspective
of people in her situation, the path to a successful
abortion in Africa must be straight and unobscured by any
other issue.
As it is preserved in the US, it
should be a woman’s right to abort.
The same opportunity, she implied, should be in
Kenya.
The US taxpayer’s money,
including monies coming from those American taxpayers who
are anti-abortion, is providing abortion for Kenyan and
African women. Unborm babies are being aborted against
cultrural norms in Africa but no matter.
I am not too enthused by Obama
lifting the ban on these abortion information providers.
But I must note that
the banning has been a game that has been going on among US
presidents for the past 25 or more years.
The changing positions have been mostly ideological,
hence my lack of enthusiasm for Obama’s stand.
I do, however, expect from the
Obama regime a better understanding of things that happen in
Africa. After all, he is part African.
This continuing plunge into
the abortion debate in Africa is unnecessary.
This is an ideological and cultural debate that has
no use for Africa, at least not at this time. To keep
on hacking on this debate is to reveal a desire to break
something of cultural value to Africans.
For, no regime in any part of Africa would support
the abortion principle as accepted in America.
It is depressing to note that the
focus on foreign aid to Africa has now shifted from
developmental intensive issues to abortion on demand.
Africa has huge issues in the area of health.
The AIDS scourge is of supreme
importance for Africa than the right to have an abortion on
demand.
Abortion will kill the unborn,
but AIDS may kill both the unborn and its parents.
Allowing AIDS to proliferate while killing the unborn would
not lead to a healthy population growth. Could
a growing African population be a problem for the Obama
administration?
Pregnancy holds no existential
threat to mankind.
There are instances when abortion may be needed. But
there has to be a safety catch in the provision and not a
free ride for all.
That safety catch must be the
difference in knowing that abortion is a convenience and not
a right. Repeat offenders need not apply.
And who am I to state this
difference? Just a father.
E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Publisher
www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC, February 9, 2009
Permission to publish:
Please feel free to publish or reproduce,
with credits, unedited.
If posted on a website, email a copy of the
web page to publisher@ghanadot.com. Or don't publish at all.
|
