The right to choose

WOMEN HAVE long fought for the right to say no. Women also had to fight for the right to say no to unwanted sex.

As the Parliament takes steps to amend the Offences Against the Person and the Sexual Offences Acts, I also look forward to Jamaica joining the rest of the world by passing a Sexual Harassment Act. I look forward to Jamaica amending the definition of and increasing the penalty for rape, especially of pregnant women, a child, persons with disabilities and for incest. It is time for Jamaica to join the 104 countries of the world that permit the termination of pregnancies without restrictions.

Like many of the presenters to this Parliament, the People’s National Party Women’s Movement does not see the termination of a pregnancy as a birth-control instrument. Indeed, we are very aware that if all women had the ‘right’ and the opportunity to use contraceptives at all times, we would eliminate the need for the proposed amendments to Sections 72 and 73.

We could also possibly reduce many of the social problems of unwanted pregnancies, of child abuse – particularly emotional and financial abuse – of overcrowded hospitals, and schools, and jails, and prisons. If women had the right to choose at all times, we could truthfully say ‘Jamaica, no problem’.

Women have been told, and have come to believe, that our most important role in life is to perpetuate life. Although it is not something that they alone can do, it is women who have this awesome privilege and responsibility, and they have no choice. If they choose not to have children, regardless of the circumstances, something is wrong with them. They are described as barren or cursed, and are made to feel that they are of no use to humanity.

DISOBEY OUT OF NECESSITY

Those of us who read the Bible know that you are only cursed by God when you do something wrong, not when something wrong is done to you. No woman wants to be cursed, and none of us set out deliberately to be cursed by God. We disobey out of necessity.

That is why a woman who has been raped in the most brutal manner – sometimes repeatedly, sometimes by more than one man, and who becomes pregnant as a result of that act of brutality and humiliation – decides that it is better to face the reminder of this heinous act for the rest of her life, because terminating the pregnancy is a sign of her own weakness, her own inhumanity, her own worthlessness and her own disobedience to God.

Numerous surveys have shown that legal restrictions on abortion do not result in fewer abortions. Instead, they increase the chances that women will seek abortion services in unsafe conditions, with attendant risks to their lives and health.

We know that a number of women from the lowest stratum of the society do become pregnant under circumstances over which they have no control – the don-man culture of some inner-city settlements, rape, incest, sex for economic survival (not official prostitution), unplanned pregnancy arising from the choice between buying contraceptives and providing the bus fare to work or the lunch money to school.

We know that there are religious beliefs which inhibit a woman’s decision to take contraceptives and so she has, not one or two, but 10 or 12 children and is at the point where her physical and mental health is severely compromised.

We do not have the statistics, because women do not talk about these things, but like others before me, we have the anecdotal stories.

In a small survey done by the Women’s Movement, 48 per cent of the 82 women present knew someone who had an abortion. None of the 82 reported having an abortion.

We hear the harrowing stories of botched abortions. We hear of the women who use clothes hangers to induce abortions. We hear about the women who take damaging tablets

– two up, one down (swallow one insert two) – and then end up at Kingston Public Hospital bleeding, many unto death.

We hear how these women are often damaged for life. They are the ones who cannot have children in the future. They are the ones who will never forget the experience of trying and succeeding or, worst, trying and failing to have an abortion. Abortion is not an easy choice for most women. It is a life-or-death decision. It is dammed if they do and dammed if they don’t. The memories live with them forever.

WHAT OF HER RIGHTS?

Jamaica is number five on the list of top 25 countries in the world with violent repeat homicide offenders. 80 per cent of those countries are former slave societies. They are societies in which men get children and women have children. Statistics have shown that most multiple murderers were abused by their mothers – the one person from whom they expect unconditional love, and the one person who just could not give them love because of the circumstance of their conception.

When a child of 14 or 15 or 16, whose mother has slaved and scraped and send her to school and her entire future is wrapped up in the success at school of that child, and one moment of human weakness or one thoughtless decision to go somewhere with a friend or circumstances beyond her control cause her to be at home with an uncle, or the mother’s boyfriend leaves her pregnant; when that fact comes with the knowledge that she can tell no one or that there is no help for her: is she a murderer because she tries to save her life? Is it right for her to get life imprisonment when a person who takes a gun and shoots a grown human being, standing in front of them, can be sentenced to seven or 12 years, or gets away free?

How can trying to save her life be worse than a 45-year-old man having sex with a six-year-old child? How can her decision not to carry a sperm until it becomes a human being be more dangerous to society than the rape of a pregnant or disabled person? How can it be worse than sex with a child – boy or girl? How can it be worse to terminate that pregnancy than to have the child and abuse it?

As the committee deliberates and seek to make its recommendations to Parliament, I ask that we consider not just the pain or the state of mind of the woman who sincerely believes she has no other choice, but the consequences of not leaving her with a choice.