Tuesday 8 August 2017

Abusing the innocent

What I read 
In India, a child under 16 is raped
every 155 minutes, a child
under 10 every 13 hours
According to "India media storm over 10-year-old pregnant rape victim" (2017), a ten-year-old girl in India who is now 32 weeks pregnant as a result of being repeatedly raped by her uncle has been refused an abortion by India's Supreme Court, forcing her to give birth next month to an unwanted baby. From a poor family, the unnamed girl enjoys the usual childhood foods, TV and school, and is apparently still unaware that her bulging stomach is due to carrying a child, although, to her family's distress, the media attention is making it increasingly difficult to shield the child from the truth, or from unsubstantiated rumours that the uncle might have committed the rapes with the consent of the mother. 
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My response 
Campaigners say 50% of abusers are
known to the child or are
"persons in trust and care-givers"
Which response to put first? My first thought was not the horrifying fact that rape and other child abuse, especially child sexual abuse, is most often committed by relatives, by close family friends or by trusted people such as priests, officials, monks and so on, but this was certainly one thing that I wanted to respond to. In this horrifying case, the little girl's uncle, living with the family, was the criminal who raped her. People often think it is strangers of whom children should beware, but this is wrong: monks, priests, teachers and relatives, especially step-relatives, are far more likely to commit these crimes than any stranger on the street. I think too many people are not aware of this and teach their children to be suspicious of strangers, whilst also telling them to blindly trust the more likely criminals: as we know (I hope), being a Christian priest or a Buddhist monk, or a school teacher, or a lawyer or anything else does not make a person more moral than a randomly chosen stranger from the street or shopping mall.

But the thing that most angered me about this ugly story were the grossly immoral laws that India has regarding abortion. At least India is not as bad as some countries, which do not allow abortion at any point in a pregnancy: Indian law does allow women to have an abortion up to 20 weeks into a pregnancy, but with too many conditions. I am sure that people who want the law to ban abortion think that they are doing the right thing, but they are wrong: they are really committing great evil. Sadly, in many countries it is the men (not so much women) who are Christian priests, bishops and other religious leaders who are forcing immoral laws on the bodies of women. These men and their blind supporters think that something is true because it is written in an ancient book! Perhaps they need a course in basic critical thinking to correct their failure to reason as well as any ten-year-old child can, or perhaps they fail to reason correctly on moral issues precisely because they have become addicted to the teachings, which are often false opinions, in their religious texts, which amazingly also give them comfortable lives and undeserved respect in society for doing nothing more than being a religious leader telling people to mindlessly believe ancient traditions instead of checking to see which are facts and which are fantasies. I can think of no good reason why a woman should not be able to have a safe, legal abortion on request, whether for physical or psychological health, financial or other reasons. Forcing women, especially rape victims or other children and teenagers, to have unwanted children means that the law is abusing innocents, and that is morally wrong: such laws are corrupt.

Calming down a little, I also chose this article to blog on because there seems to me a connection with Steven Law's essay "Carving the Roast Beast", which we are reading. I'm wondering whether anyone will make that connection in their response. As always, there were also several other articles recently published on the BBC News, but this is the one to which I had the strongest response, so it got chosen. Perhaps someone else will choose to blog on "Atheists believed to be less moral, says study" or "Google employee anti-diversity memo causes row" (which also seemed to me relevant to our reading by Law) or one of the other news stories that have caught my attention recently.
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 My question for readers 
What do you think? Should the law allow a woman to have an abortion on request? 
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Reference
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3 comments:

  1. Peter AUA8 August 2017 at 07:54

    And Google's word count tool (on the Tools menu of Google Docs) tells me that my summary is just 120 words, which is safely within the 135 word limit.

    Although some of your first summaries went over that limit, I didn't worry too much about it. But for the following blog posts, I will be more strict: the maximum number of words for your summary paragraph is 135.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous8 August 2017 at 20:13

    I was travelling in India few months ago. It was, probably, the most difficult month in my life. I was travelling around non-touristic spots, where people had probably never seen a white man. This is another planet! And I can say, that Hindus almost don't pay attention to their children. Life is very difficult, and, for example, large family often doesn't have enough money for food. Maybe you remember the movie "Slumdog Millionaire". So, father of Rubina Ali (the actress who were playing the main character in her childhood) wanted to sell her to Arabian sheikh for 297 000$. This is actually the real life in India. And I'm sure there are a lot of such stories.
    Of course, the situation in this article is crazy (I can't find other worlds). And, of course, first of all, society must take care of the girl's interests. But anyway, we have to remember that we talk about India. This is the place with its own religion and its views on life. I don't defend them, I just try to understand how big is this problem.

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  3. Anonymous9 August 2017 at 21:56

    Abortion is one of the most critical topics many countries are facing. It quite tough to make abortion legal in the country such as India. I have no idea about how controversial it is in Indian now. I decided to speak in wild perspective about this issue.

    Morally, of course, it wrong to have an abortion we can see that in many countries that people face shortage of education, and extremely believe in their religion. However, making people be more educational is a long-term process, and it takes a lot effort not only from government but also people themselves. they might not, perhaps, understand this idea.

    I think that women should have the right to have an abortion. When you have a kid you have to be ready for many things that will come to you. not only in mental effects but raising a kid took a lot of effort. If women not ready when they have a baby. It will cause more problem which is very hard to solve.

    ReplyDelete

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