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“Abortion: 'If only I
had known more' “, went the title
E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Ghanadot
Let’s get this information out before this discussion gets
muddy. I am not a woman, but as a man I have had long
experience in the reproductive act. My experience, to be
truthful, doesn’t come with the pain of gestating for nine
months.
It may even be hypocritical on my part to say that “I felt”
the pain of childbirth when my wife was in the process. I
didn’t. I felt stupefied by just being present, and I have
had three kids. So much for my experience.
But when I read this description by the BBC of someone,
supposedly a “ 26-year-old Kenyan student who had an illegal
abortion” at age 18 reacting to President Barack Obama’s
lifting the ban on “US aid money going to abortion
counseling groups..” I feel the need to say that this defies
common sense and that this hypocrisy has gone too far.
The fact of the matter is that this girl was 18 years old at
the time of her first pregnancy. When I was about her age, I
knew about condoms. I had no knowledge about AIDS. AIDS has
made the usage of condom very essential for the sexually
precocious kids of today. She should have been using
condoms.
And she said she was. 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,” was her excuse;
could be true or false.
But what about after the act, nothing informed her that the
condom went burst? Again, I will plead innocent. However, a
man as participant in the act, will know the moment the
condom went.
Eight years ago, AIDS was around, probably at its peak
and growing worse in Africa. Surely if it is knowledge she
was seeking, for practicing safe sex and avoiding pregnancy,
she had the opportunity within her own environment to see
the devastating impact of AIDS. The message of AIDS was and
is still death. Fortunately, she got pregnant instead of
getting AIDS.
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.”
Note that she by-passed her parents for the expert advice of
her aunt, a very reliable aunt who would keep her condition
secret from her own father or mother! It appears now that
this aunt, who provided this essential service, didn’t know
enough at the time because this young woman will later say
in her title “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 “aunt”, whose own daughter had an abortion!
The rest of her story is a sop. At the time of writing, 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.”
The whole point of her argument is that abortion must be
done properly and that she was denied this because agents
who depended on
USAID money to provide the proper knowledge
couldn’t do so, having been deprived of the means by the US
ban. The catastrophy that befell her was, therefore, the
result of this ban and now that Obama has removed the
barrier, all will be well.
Obviously, from the perspective of people in her situation,
the path to a successful abortion must depend on the US
taxpayer’s money. But American taxpayers who are
anti-abortion must have no say in the matter!
I am not too enthused by the lifting of this ban by Obama.
This ban is a game that has been going back and forth among
US presidents for the past 25 or more years. The position
they take is mostly ideological, hence my lack of enthusiasm
for Obama’s stand. I do, however, expect better things of
him than this plunge into the abortion debate.
That Africa needs help to stem the AIDS scourge is of
supreme importance for me than the right to have an abortion
on call. It is depressing to realize that the focus on
foreign aid now has shifted from more developmental
intensive issues to abortion because of the lifting of this
ban. Shift back the abortion money to combat AIDS.
Abortion will kill the baby, but AIDS may kill both parents,
plus the baby.
There are instances when abortion can provide solution.
By all means, have that abortion, but there has to be a
safety catch for this ride. That safety catch must be the
difference in knowing that abortion is a convenience and not
a right. Repeat offenders need not apply.
Who am I? 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 at a website,
email a copy of the web page to
publisher@ghanadot.com . Or don't publish at all.
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