Abortion Laws In India

Abortion issue reflects ironies of modern living By Jayanthi Natarajan The Niketa Mehta case, and the subsequent judgment pronounced by the Bombay high court, have suddenly brought into national focus the important issue of abortion, and the social moral, ethical and political issues surrounding it. Although the facts of the Niketa case were relatively straightforward, as was the judgment of the court, the issues that arise out of it are far reaching, and important. As the extensive press coverage has reported, Niketa Mehta and her husband filed a petition before the Bombay high court seeking to abort their unborn foetus due to the finding of a pre-natal test which suggested that their baby might be born with a congenital heart abnormality, which might entail their baby to be on a pacemaker, almost from birth, and require intensive care and treatment for almost the whole of its life. The court rejected their plea on the basis of the 37-yearold law, which prohibits abortion after 20 weeks, unless under exceptional circumstances such as a threat to the mother’s life. The court also declared that nothing in the medical report confirmed the fear of Niketa and her husband that their baby would be born with a congenital abnormality. The emotional trauma that the Mehtas must have gone through can only be imagined. As any parent can testify, the joy of parenting is equal only to the agony of worry about the health and well-being of the offspring. If a mother knows beforehand that her child will suffer a permanent disability, the complex emotional conflict and the sorrow which engulf her are so raw and painful that it is impossible to describe. After all, it is the parents who will have to care for the child, and turn their lives upside down in the process. It is the parents who will have to watch as their disabled child tries to first understand and then integrate with a hostile environment which is so poorly suited to coping with disabled peers, both at a physical as well as emotional level. Having had some experience with disabled children and their parents, I have watched the daily stress and adjustment and the massive patience that is required to lead a near normal life. To make such an issue the subject of law or a national debate is one of the ironies of modern living. It is an intensely personal matter, the dilemma of parents who have to make a crucial and painful decision: whether or not to abort their unborn baby, or if they should face the prospect of caring lifelong for the physical and mental health of a disabled child. The decision, by its very nature, is traumatic, but to have it debated in the media, the courts and by legislators is so invasive that it is difficult for anyone who believes strongly in individual liberty and freedom to accept. This is a classic case of an intensely personal issue becoming a socio-legal problem with medical dimensions. Thus the human dimension of the problem, and the fact that the individual decision on such an issue resonates on an entirely different plane from the public debate, is something that has become part of the complex anomaly of the abortion debate. Abortion, or medical termination of pregnancy, as we call it in India, is one of the oldest methods of fertility control in the world. It brings to the fore primordial sentiments. The debate has diverse historical and cultural meanings, which are specific to countries, to stages of demographic transition, struggles over gender roles, reliance on abortion for fertility regulation in a particular area, struggle between religion and the state in some countries, on the abortion issue, cross-national similarities, the prevalent social construct, and the management of the surrounding conflict. The resultant debate is often poorly informed, particularly in the context of the gender, social and political cleavage in these matters, and the fact that society finds it awkward and difficult to openly talk about these issues.

In our country, the debate has never really focused upon abortion as a religious or moral issue with the same intensity that is found in several other countries. This is perhaps the reason that the Mehtas found the courage to take their problem to court, and also the fact that the public debate that followed has been somewhat calm and reasoned, and devoid of the hysteria that usually accompanies most of our national debates. Although this is an impression not based on any particular data or substance, I am inclined to believe that this important debate has been conducted in a calm atmosphere because it is not the political dynamite that some vested interests like to exploit in a bid to divide society and gain electoral advantage. The issue is, nevertheless, extremely important. The law says that abortion cannot be carried out after 20 weeks of pregnancy, whereas, oftentimes, abnormalities, if any, can only be found after 20 weeks. Surely the parents have the right to determine if they should go forward and bring into the world a disabled child or not. On the other hand, those who oppose this talk about the advanced growth of the foetus, at this point, and about the right to life of the baby, also argue passionately about the harmful effects on the mother’s health if abortion is conducted at such a late stage. Over 40 to 50 million abortions are carried out worldwide, out of which it is estimated that between 20 to 28 million abortions are illegal. The reasons for these are varied, and range between saving the life of the mother, for the sake of the mother’s physical or mental health, if the mother had been the victim of rape or incest, foetal impairment (as in the Mehta’s case), economic and social reasons, and simply on request in a small percentage of cases. In Asia alone there are over 9.2 million clandestine abortions a year. It is ironical that the moral, social and emotional complexity surrounding a decision to abort is not apparent in the public debate. Yet it is the public debate which will determine the right of citizens to opt for abortion. In India, although the debate is not so contentious as it has been in other countries, we too have to think very seriously about the perils of too much freedom in this regard, because if the law is amended to give parents the right to decide, it is all too possible that it will be used to get rid of the female foetus and further violate the already skewed male-female ratio in our country. The moral dilemma of those who believe in the right to life of the unborn child has also to be considered very seriously, for no right thinking person can concede that couples may arbitrarily decide, perhaps even on a whim, that a foetus should be aborted. The more conservative elements in our society believe that easy access to abortion may encourage promiscuity among the young. While some of these may be reactionary and incorrect arguments, they cannot really be wished away. Respect for individual human existence is, and has to be, basic to any civilised society. However, in the ultimate analysis, abortion, provided it causes no involuntary harm and produces some benefits for individuals and society, can and should be permitted legally. Above all, the emotional and personal dilemma of the persons involved should take precedence in the public debate, and inform the law. Jayanthi Natarajan is a Congress MP in the Rajya Sabha and AICC spokesperson. The views expressed in this column are her own.

China is no longer a totalitarian state By Nicholas D. Kristof To put a smiley face on its image during the Olympics, the Chinese government set

aside three "protest zones" in Beijing. Officials explained that so long as protesters obtained approval in advance, demonstrations would be allowed. So I decided to test the system. Following government instructions, I showed up at an office of the Beijing public security bureau, found Window 12 and declared to the officer, "I’m here to apply to hold a protest." What I didn’t realise is that public security has arrested at least a half-dozen people who have shown up to apply for protest permits. In the old days public security had to go out and catch protesters in the act. Now would-be protesters show up at public security offices to apply for permits and are detained. The official at Window 12 didn’t peg me as a counterrevolutionary. He looked at me and asked for my passport and other ID papers. Discovering that I was a journalist, he asked hopefully, "Wouldn’t you rather conduct an interview about demonstrations?" "No. I want to apply to hold one." His brow furrowed. "What do you want to protest?" "I want to demonstrate in favour of preserving Beijing’s historic architecture." It was the least controversial topic I could concoct. "Do you think the government is not doing a good job at this?" he asked sternly. "There may be room for improvement," I said delicately. The official frowned and summoned two senior colleagues who, after a series of frantic phone calls, led me into the heart of the police building. I was accompanied by a Times videographer, and he and a police videographer busily videoed each other. Then the police explained that under the rules they could video us but we couldn’t video them. The public security bureau gleams like much of the rest of Beijing. It’s a fine metaphor for China’s legal system: The hardware is impeccable, but the software is primitive. After an hour of waiting, interrupted by periodic frowning examinations of our press credentials, we were ushered into an elegant conference room. I was solemnly directed to a chair marked "applicant." Three police officers sat across from me, and the police videographer continued to film us from every angle. The officers were all cordial and professional, although one seemed to be daydreaming about pulling out my fingernails. Then they spent nearly an hour going over the myriad rules for demonstrations. These were detailed and complex, and, most daunting, I would have to submit a list of every single person attending my demonstration. The list had to include names and identity document numbers. In addition, any Chinese on a name list would have to go first to the public security bureau in person to be interviewed (arrested?). "If I go through all this, then will my application at least be granted?" I asked. "How can we tell?" a policeman responded. "That would prejudge the process."

"Well, has any application ever been granted?" I asked. "We can’t answer that, for that matter has no connection to this case." The policemen did say that if they approved, they would give me a "Demonstration Permission Document." Without that, my demonstration would be illegal. I surrendered. The rules were so bureaucratic that I couldn’t even apply for a demonstration. My Olympic dreams were dashed. The police asked me to sign their note-taker’s account of the meeting, and we politely said our goodbyes. Yet even though the process is a charade, it still represents progress in China, in that the law implicitly acknowledges the legitimacy of protest. Fear of the government is ebbing. My hunch is that in the coming months, perhaps after the Olympics, we will see some approvals granted. China is changing: it is no democracy, but it’s also no longer a totalitarian state.

Ignorance, arrogance retard India’s battle against terror By Arun Kumar Singh A day after the nation celebrated Independence Day last week, the Gujarat police announced it had cracked the July 26 bomb blasts case with the arrest of 10 Simi activists from Uttar Pradesh. This was a welcome development, as was the decision to set up an anti-terrorist academy in Gandhinagar. But one cannot but be bewildered by a series of recent events: * The narrow escape of Surat, where 29 unexploded bombs were found; * The disastrous incidents in Jammu and Kashmir in the past six weeks, after a new governor was installed; * The statement on August 12 by the national security adviser that since 2004, about 800 terror modules had been unearthed (given a rough thumb rule of five undiscovered modules for every one unearthed, some 4,000 sleeper cells are still unaccounted for); * In Uttar Pradesh, counterfeit rupee notes worth thousands of crores found in SBI branches; * At the Beijing Olympics, a nation of one billion-plus finally got its first individual gold medal since the modern Games started in 1896; * Inauguration of the same Olympic Games was attended by Sonia Gandhi, making this her second visit to China in a year despite ongoing Chinese incursions along the border; * Pakistan, despite its ongoing war on terror along the Afghan border, and its preoccupation with impeaching President Pervez Musharraf, found time to violate the four-year-old ceasefire on the Line of Control almost on a weekly basis; * Russia, alarmed by the eastward expansion of Nato, sent its armed forces into Georgia;

* India remained focused on the progress of the nuclear deal with the US despite various American spokespersons saying there were no inconsistencies between the 123 Agreement, the Hyde Act and the 1954 US Atomic Energy Act. I have been astounded by some recent statements by so-called experts and retired government bureaucrats. Here are a few samples: A retired bureaucrat told me that "changing borders or creating new nations was no longer possible, and the 1971 creation of Bangladesh was an aberration." He was stumped when I reminded him about the breakup of the Soviet Union into 15 states, and Yugoslavia into another four. But with typical arrogance, borne out of spending years in the "corridors of power", he stated these too were "aberrations". He got rather upset when I mentioned East Timor, because he was not even aware of this new nation which had been carved out of Indonesia! There was another retired bureaucrat who said that despite the recent bomb blasts, "India had nothing to learn from the United States, the UK, China, Russia or Spain, because we were too big, too complex... And in any case, we had taught these nations how to build computerised terrorist data banks. Yes, there will be terror attacks, but we have the resilience to withstand these." He had no answer when I told him: "No human being likes to get blown up or see his family killed or maimed, and it’s only a matter of time before the people of India demand accountability from politicians, bureaucrats and policemen in this undeclared war on terror. After all, following the 1962 war with China, the Army Chief and a corps commander were sacked, and defence minister Krishna Menon was shifted to another ministry." Let me give you the example of the US, which officially declared war on terror after 9/11. The US set up the department of homeland security and passed the USA Patriot Act in 2001. Yes, there were some complaints against this draconian but effective law. So in July 2005, a few cosmetic changes were made. In addition, the homeland security department added a few new sections to deal with "privacy, civil rights, civil liberties." This law now has 25 sections covering every conceivable field, electronically connected by instant data link — these include data banks, airports, seaports, roadways, inland waterways, nuclear, medical, narcotics, immigration, customs, emergencies, US Coast Guard, transportation, border management, intelligence, and emergency management, among others. In India, as in any democracy, the war on terror requires democratically-elected politicians to be advised by bureaucrats, police, intelligence and paramilitary units; the armed forces are only called in as a last resort. The problem is that amongst the "advisers" we have a disastrously lethal combination of ignorance, arrogance, nonaccountability and unwillingness to either learn from others or from our own past mistakes. The concept of "real-time electronic-based situational awareness, from the top to the field operative" is simply unknown to most of these people. It must be realised that the "policeman on the beat" can only deter petty criminals and not fanatic, suicidal jihadis. The proposed police reforms were framed in the preglobal terrorism era, and its results are there for all to see in Jammu and Kashmir, the 13 Naxalite-infested states, the seven Northeast states, and by the recent terrorist strikes. Added to this is the situation on our borders with China and Pakistan, and the estimated 20 million illegal Bangladeshi migrants — all of which present a clear security threat to this nation. By now, even the most

broadminded and secular Indian will agree that we have a fifth column operating in India. Given the present state of affairs, it is imperative that the government officially declares that India is in a state of prolonged war with faceless and stateless terrorists, and that a policy of "zero tolerance" would be adopted to counter them. Once a state of war is declared, certain ruthless wartime measures can be taken, some restrictions can be placed, new ordinances and laws passed, a new wartime integral organisation can be instituted, forces raised and equipped under an unified command, fast-track courts set up and accountability introduced. The time has come to forget votebank politics and do something different, because the people of India are not sacrificial goats. Vice-Admiral Arun Kumar Singh retired as Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Eastern Naval Command, Visakhapatnam

Wake-up call: Bush cannot treat Russia like Jamaica By Maureen Dowd WASHINGTON America’s back in the cold war and W.’s back on vacation. Talk about your fearful symmetry. After eight years, the President’s gut remains gullible. He’ll go out as he came in — ignoring reality; failing to foresee, prevent or even prepare for disasters; misinterpreting intelligence reports; misreading people; and handling crises in ways that makes them exponentially worse. He has spent 469 days of his presidency kicking back at his ranch, and 450 days cavorting at Camp David. And there’s still time to mountain-bike through another historic disaster. As Russian troops continued to manhandle parts of Georgia on Friday, President Bush chastised Russian leaders that "bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century" — and then flew off to Crawford. His words might have carried more weight if he, Cheney and Rummy had not kicked off the 21st century with a ham-fisted display of global bullying and intimidation modelled after Sherman’s march through the other Georgia. We knew we could count on the cheerleader in chief to be jumping around like a kid in Beijing with bikini-clad beach volleyball players while the Re-Evil Empire was sending columns of tanks into its former republic. (Georgia made the mistake of baiting the bear.) If only W. had taken the rest of his presidency as seriously as he’s taken his sports outings. When I interviewed him at the start of his first presidential run in 1999, he took an obvious shot and told me, "I believe the big issues are going to be China and Russia." But after 9/11, he let Cheney, Rummy and the neocons gull him into a destructive obsession with Iraq.

While America has been bogged down and bled dry, China and Russia are plumping up. China has bought so much of America that we’d be dead Peking ducks if they pulled their investments out of our market, and Russia has transformed itself from a pauper nation to a land filled with millionaires — all through our addiction to oil. What was so galling about watching W.’s giddy sightseeing at the Olympics was that it underscored China’s rise as a superpower and, thanks to the administration’s derelict foreign and economic policies, America’s fade-out. It’s as though China has become us and we’ve become Europe. Like Russia, China has also been showing jagged authoritarian ways and ignoring America’s preaching, including W.’s tame criticism as he flew into Beijing to revel in the spectacle of China’s ascension. Despite his 1999 prediction that Russia and China would be key to security in the world, W. never bothered to study up on them. In 2006, at the Group of Eight summit meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, a microphone caught some of the inane remarks of W. to the Chinese President, Hu Jintao. "This is your neighbourhood," W. said. "It doesn’t take you long to get home. How long does it take you to get home? Eight hours? Me, too. Russia’s a big country and you’re a big country." President Bush and his Russian "expert" Condi have played it completely wrong with Russia from the start. W. saw a "trustworthy" soul in a razor-eyed KGB agent who has never been a good guy for a single hour. Now the Bush crowd, which can do nothing about it, is blustering about how Russian aggression "must not go unanswered," as Cheney put it. (W.’s other Russian expert, Bob Gates, was, as always, the only voice of realism, noting, "I don’t see any prospect for the use of military force by the United States in this situation.") The Bush administration may have a sentimental attachment to Georgia because it sent 2,000 troops to Iraq as part of the fig-leaf Coalition of the Willing, and because Poppy Bush and James Baker were close to Georgia’s first President, Eduard Shevardnadze. But with this country’s military and moral force so depleted, the Bushies can hardly tell Russia to stop doing what they themselves did in Iraq: unilaterally invade a country against the will of the world to scare the bejesus out of some leaders in the region they didn’t like. W. and Condi are suddenly waking up to how vicious Vladimir is. In a press conference with Condi on Friday, Mikheil Saakashvili, the President of Georgia, chided the West for enabling Russia to resume its repressive tactics. "Unfortunately, today we are looking evil directly in the eye," he said. "And today this evil is very strong, very nasty and very dangerous, for everybody, not only for us." As Michael Specter, the New Yorker writer who has written extensively about Russia, observed: "There was a brief five-year period when we could get away with treating Russia like Jamaica — that’s over. Now we have to deal with them like grown-ups who have more nuclear weapons than anybody except us."