Both happened to have women at the core of the matter.
The first one which has received applause from almost all sections of the society globally, especially women, is the Supreme Court verdict on September 29, on the right to abortion. However, in contrast, a bizarre incident which happened two days before the verdict was a retort by an IAS officer to a query from a young girl in Bihar about providing sanitary pads to girls for free.
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The Apex Court in delivering the judgment on the interpretation of the amendments and rules of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971, has made sweeping remarks which will make huge leaps in the reproductive rights of women. While, in today’s time no one issue remains unanimously agreed upon and hence there will be debates on the ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ of the rulings of the Supreme Court, the judgment will provide relief and a sense of self-worth to a large section of the society in the patriarchal social system of the country.
A paper published in 2018 in a journal, The Lancet, estimated that 15•6 million abortions occurred in India in 2015 for women aged 15–49 years. However, only about 22 per cent of these were obtained in health facilities, whereas the remaining 78 per cent were abortions done outside of health facilities, including five per cent abortions done using methods other than medication abortion. The research further concluded that abortions accounted for one third of all pregnancies, and nearly half of pregnancies were unintended.
While the family as an institution is the fundamental premise for the existence of the society and continuity of human life, it is equally important to recognise that women cannot be treated as children-producing machines. Given that more than three-fourths of the abortions are carried out outside the medical facilities, it is an indication of the taboo and the social stigmatisation it carries for the women.
Thus, the Supreme Court standing by the women’s right to abortion will open doors of accessibility of proper medical facilities for a large section of the women folk who have often had to either undergo through the traditional methods of abortions or, under due pressure, succumb to giving birth of an unintended and unwanted pregnancy.
However, the shocking retort by none less than an IAS officer, Harjot Kaur, who is also the Managing Director of Bihar’s Women Development Corporation, is an excellent case of how the privileged take for granted their accessibility and look down upon the basic necessities of those less fortunate and without accessibility.
A young college girl during an interaction at a workshop titled Sashakt Beti, Samriddh Bihar (Empowered Daughters, Prosperous Bihar) asked if the government could provide sanitary pads, especially to girls from the marginalised sections of the society. The response from the IAS officer, since the video of her statement went viral, has evoked sharp reactions as Kaur ended the conversation with a bizarre point saying, “Pakistan ban jao” (become like Pakistan).
What the officer intended to impress upon is that asking for sanitary pads is akin to a dole. She perhaps was trying to epitomise the request to the ‘revadi’ or ‘freebie culture’ that Prime Minister Narendra Modi pointed at during a function in Uttar Pradesh.
While freebies have become a part and parcel of the mighty political parties in the country, the request from Riya Kumari, a young college girl from the Kamala Nehru Nagar area in Patna, Bihar, is deeply rooted in the quest for a better healthcare option to millions of Indian girls and women who suffer in silence.
It’s girls like Riya, who are the kind of torch bearers the nation needs to ensure that women from the lowest of the lower strata of society get equal access to better healthcare and livelihood facilities.
