Roy Notice | There is another way, Minister Terrelonge

Defending the rights of women and that of her unborn children are not matters on a collision course, although Alando Terrelonge, minister of state in the Ministry of Culture, Gender Entertainment, and Sport, seems to think so.

Terrelonge, in a strongly-worded column published in The Gleaner on February 9, put forward the argument that legalising abortion is one sure way of advancing the rights of women and protecting their reproductive health. Terrelonge posited, “True gender equality cannot be achieved unless and until we relinquish our pervasive desire to enslave, control, and police the body and dignity of women.”

In that statement, the minister seems to be contending that to fight for the right of an unborn child is tantamount to “enslaving, controlling and policing the body and dignity of women”. I regard this position as fundamentally flawed, because it assumes that the body of the child is one and the same as the body of the woman.

Let us be clear, the abortion argument is not about the woman’s body, but rather about the human life developing inside that body. The baby growing inside the woman is a separate human being, who should be afforded rights. The woman’s body is connected to, but separate and distinguishable from the life growing within her. With that connection comes the obligation to offer care and protection, but not the right to kill.

SANCTITY OF HUMAN LIFE

At the very heart of the abortion debate is the sanctity of human life. Personhood is defined by membership in the human species, not by the stage of development within that species. Similar to toddlerhood and adolescence, the terms embryo and foetus do not refer to non-humans, but to humans at particular stages of development. A person is not deemed a human being based on size, skill, or degree of intelligence. Personhood is not subjective, and if we try to make it so, then that approach could become self-serving.

The helplessness and powerlessness of an unborn child do not make the child less human. If that were the case then we could use the same argument to justify getting rid of the elderly who suffer from dementia, or the paraplegic, who has lost some of his or her human capacity.

I want, therefore, to rephrase the minister’s statement and frame it this way as we seek to defend the rights of unborn children:

“True human equality cannot be achieved unless, and until we relinquish our active desire to kill and dispose of unborn children, treating them as mere inconvenient masses of protoplasm.”

Legalising the killing of unborn babies cannot be justified by arguing that it is a widely practised illegal activity that leaves emotional, physical and psychological scars on women when not properly executed. If we are to pursue that argument to its logical conclusion, then the government would need to legalise abortion so that the killing of unborn babies may become seamless.

We should never use statistical evidence that proves the prevalence of an illegal activity as a justification for legalisation. If, in fact, more than 22,000 unborn babies are killed in this country each year, what that should cause is great lamenting and soul -searching. As a nation, we should lament that our women, who have unwanted pregnancies, feel that they cannot find adequate emotional, spiritual, and financial help to support them through very difficult days, without resorting to aborting the child.

ADVANCING WOMEN’S RIGHTS

I agree with Minister Terrelonge that, “It is time for Jamaica to truly play her part in advancing the welfare of her women”. Legalising abortion is certainly not one of the ways to support women’s reproductive health and women’s rights. I want to suggest some more meaningful and uplifting ways that we may consider in our quest to preserve and promote women’s reproductive health and women’s rights:

1. Strengthen the justice system so that victimised women may be confident that they have a recourse whenever they have been treated unjustly.

2. Establish more havens for victims of domestic and sexual violence

3. Encourage the formation of more support groups for women, especially single mothers

4. Strengthen women’s ministries in churches, and ensure that each has an outreach arm for women who are not members of churches

5. Offer more counselling facilities that troubled women may access

6. Provide budgetary support to better equip existing clinics and to improve pre and postnatal care for women

7. Re-train policemen and women to become more responsive to domestic violence issues

8. Train more social workers and deploy them to support families

9. Properly fund and monitor government and privately-owned homes and other facilities for children

10. Promote and teach values and attitudes that encourage responsible sexual behaviours.

11. Promote healthy family life. Have a government ministry that deals solely with family affairs.

Abortion is the easy, unjust path out of a moral dilemma. Women’s rights must be undergirded by a higher morality and not by the use of a medical procedure that does not address a medical issue. Abortion is justified where continuing a pregnancy is threatening both the life of the unborn child and the mother, and terminating the pregnancy would definitely save the mother’s life. In such cases, the procedure should be used as a last-resort medical decision to save a life.

Rev Dr Roy Notice is administrative bishop of the New Testament Church of God in Jamaica. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com