Although I am still unsure how a Bill for Women’s
Reproductive and Sexual Health cam e to be The Abortion Bill, it has certainly
brought attention to a controversial issue. Everybody has an opinion and
everybody has a right to their opinion, even me.
Consider this scenario; a young married woman just graduated
from university having faced the challenges of teenage pregnancy and marriage, studying,
mothering 2 children, and being a wife. Things have been very tough for her and
her husband financially, especially in the past year.
She’s preparing for Law School
She married young because she got pregnant and didn’t have an
abortion. Now she’s seriously considering it.
Despite resistance from conservatives and religious
institutions decisions about abortion are not often based on the rigid morality
they preach. Then again it also not exclusively about a woman’s right to choose,
although I do believe she has the right.
Sometimes it’s a decision based on unfavorable environmental and
economic conditions. The government should concentrate on eradicating the
conditions that lead to pregnancies being unwanted or unwelcome.
There is only one way to save the family; there is no
conservation effort that does not require a lot of money to implement and
sustain; it is a fact that an organism that is not able to adapt to environmental
conditions becomes extinct.
Only when it comes to the conservation of the human species
which it has been shown thrives best in a nurturing and stable social
environment do we try to use ideological coercion to compel behavior instead of
changing the environmental conditions that create it.
The Church and all religions place emphasis on the soul and
forget the words of the Man himself, Jesus the Christ when he replied the
Pharisees question about whether an oath on the temple or the gold in the
temple was better. He asked “The gold and the temple that makes the gold holy
which is more important?” Go figure it out.
We must stop this knee jerk reaction to abortion. I was
appalled to read no less than a distinguished former executive member of the
Nigerian Medical Association saying that ‘no woman’s life is more important
than the life growing inside her no matter what’. Well excuse me sir! I beg to
disagree and point out not any one life is more important than another.
That abortion must be safe and available safely does not mean
to suggest that it should be available indiscriminately or chosen as an option
indiscriminately. Abortion is not an option only for ‘women of easy virtue’ or
the ‘promiscuous’. It is a choice many ‘regular’ women, sweet mothers, good
wives, loving daughters and quite a few ‘good men’ face at least once in their
lives.
Like Daisy Danjuma, the sponsor of the very commendable
Institute of Reproductive & Sexual Health bill, many elite women have ‘the
opportunity’ to deliver safely and for that matter to have safe abortions when
they need them. The elite women cannot afford to abandon the low income women
for whom abortion remains a not only a crime, but an increasingly desperate and
deadly one.
Last night as I watered the flowers in my garden I noticed
that some melon seeds I had planted a couple week earlier had sprouted and
needed to be thinned out. “I hate this part” I said to my friend that was
standing there watching me, “I hate having to kill some of the plants just to
let others live” but I have to in order to let them grow and yield abundantly.
In that moment it occurred to me that children are the same,
they grow and yield best when they are optimally spaced and though we may hate
having to ‘space them’ or even ‘thin them out’ sometimes it’s the only thing
that makes sense. Some children are like fruits and some are like flowers, both
are important in God’s garden, and so are the weeds; they are after all what
keep us vigilant busy and appreciative.
Reproductive and sexual issues do have a place in our lives
as human beings. Contraception, family planning and yes abortion all have a
place in our lives. Which of you would allow a 10 year old victim of a brutal
rape to bear the child she is carrying?
My friend breeds pedigree dog’s, she told me that she breeds
her female dogs only twice to ensure the quality of their puppies. And of
course they have these complex set of rules about in breeding and cross
breeding.
I sometimes get the feeling that we treat animals better than
our fellow human beings. Now I do not mean to suggest that we should treat
human beings like animals, before some fundamentalist gets the wrong idea! I’m
just drawing attention to some contradictions I see.
Makes me feel that the ‘morality’ of religion is more about
judgment than common sense or even compassion, now isn’t that what Jesus Christ
came to preach and teach about?
Are we more intent on passing judgment and punishing
perceived offenders than helping them to sin no more? As He said to the
Pharisees “He that is without sin should cast the first stone”
That young woman in the beginning was me. I was desperate.
After much praying, soul searching and agonizing I decided to have an abortion.
And then I had a miscarriage. I like to believe that God heard me.
Remain blessed and beloved
Lesley Gene Agams Esq.
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