Hanna missed mark on abortion rights

Woman's call to terminate goes beyond social burden

Maziki Thame, GUEST COLUMNIST

We are in possession of enough evidence today to conclude that women in pre-patriarchal societies knew better how to regulate the number of their children and the frequency of births than do modern women, who have lost this knowledge through their subjection to the patriarchal capitalist civilising process (Elias, as cited in Maria Mies, 1986, 1998:54)

The Ute Indians used litho-spermium, and the Bororo women in Brazil used a plant which made them temporarily sterile. The missionaries persuaded the women not to use the plant any more ... . Women in Egypt used a vaginal sponge, dipped in honey, to reduce the mobility of sperm. (Fisher, as cited in Maria Mies, 1986, 1998:54)

Under enslavement and several years subsequent to Emancipation, [in the Caribbean] women would employ a variety of techniques and methods to prevent the continuation or the realisation of pregnancy. The examples in history of activities such as induced abortions demonstrate that women have always been active agents in elements of resistance, and highlight their desire to have control over their own bodies, despite larger societal implications. (Shakira Maxwell, 2012:95-96)

Millions of women, mostly of poor peasant or poor urban origin, [in Europe] were for centuries persecuted, tortured and finally burnt as witches because they tried to retain a certain autonomy over their bodies, particularly their generative forces. The attack of the Church and State against the witches was aimed not only at the subordination of female sexuality as such, although this played a major role, but against their practices as abortionists and midwives. (Mies, 1986, 1998:70)

Abortion laws in Jamaica criminalise women and those who assist them in terminating their pregnancies and are out of step with common practice.

In 2007, the Abortion Policy Review Advisory Group made its final report to the minister of health. It found that the Offences Against the Person Act, which legislates on abortions, has held language intact since 1861. The act provides for a maximum penalty of life imprisonment for abortion and three years for anyone who assists in procuring an unlawful abortion.

The group reported that 65-70 per cent of women in the Caribbean would have had at least one abortion by age 44 and more than half of those would have had more than one. Abortion, it said, is therefore "a majority phenomenon" for our women.

compulsory motherhood, marriage

Among the most limiting aspects of women's lives, their access to freedoms and so-called liberal rights are compulsory motherhood and, in the case of the Jamaican middle-class woman, compulsory marriage. Motherhood and marriage cause women to become burdened with duties of domesticity, mostly without the assistance of men, thus limiting their engagement in the public sphere where rights and freedoms are enjoyed.

Mothering is the ultimate expression of womanhood and femininity in the Jamaican setting, even for women who are not biological mothers. Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller's representation in politics as Mama P is reflective of those expectations of the roles of women.

Given the multiple mitigating factors that determine women's and girls' capacity to negotiate non-procreative and 'safe' sex, and the social mechanisms that limit their control over their bodies, reproduction is often presented to girls and women as their most viable choice if they desire normality in society.

The stigma associated with abortion adds even further gravity to the notion that women fail as women if they do not reproduce. In popular discourse, women who 'dash weh belly' are reduced to 'walking cemeteries', despite the complex decision-making process involved for girls and boys, women and men who decide to terminate pregnancies.

Even while the State has several times attempted to improve women's access to abortion, obstructed mainly by the Church, debate within Parliament often indicates problematic understandings of the issues of women's freedoms and their control over their bodies - in a word, their personal autonomy.

When Minister of Youth and Culture Lisa Hanna brought a motion to reopen the debate on abortion in June, she couched it in language that showed more of a concern for the State's capacity to manage the care and consequences of "unwanted children" than for women's freedoms and rights as citizens in a civilised, democratic political association.

Hanna noted that it cost the State $1.7 billion a year to fund the Child Development Agency and some $436 million to operate government-run homes (http://us-mg6.mail.yahoo.com/neo/-_ftn1). She highlighted problems such as inadequate parenting skills employed by "child" mothers and the neglect and abuse of children, which would presumably encourage social decay given the "direct correlation between crime and unwanted children" as reasons to pursue pro-choice legislation.

putting Money over people

Minister Hanna's arguments reflect the sort of morbid prioritising of fiscality over people's well-being, characteristic of neoliberal dogma which prevails in local politics and economics. She reduced women's concerns regarding their control over their bodies to a means to purging the nation of 'undesirables'.

Certainly, there are many other points of social intervention needed to prevent unwanted children and crime such as empowering and educative social programmes, and exposing and undermining sexism as a means to protecting young women from sexual predation by older men.

The right to jurisdiction over her person that a woman ought to have, reflected in the right to abortion, if she deems it necessary, should be precisely this: a personal decision by a contemplative, autonomous being. It should never be a means by which the State attempts to circumvent engagement with difficult social problems.

Even while it is important that Hanna raised the matter of women's rights to abortion, the way in which she entered the debate had no far-reaching implications for women's empowerment.

When considering the role of the State in these matters, we should instead seek to come to terms with the recommendations of the Abortion Policy Review Advisory Group that "we need to come to terms with our preference for control and grow beyond our fear of freedom. We need to trust women as responsible moral agents and give them the freedom to decide."

Dr Maziki Thame is a lecturer in the Department of Government at the University of the West Indies. Greg Graham of the Department of African and African American Studies, University of Oklahoma, contributed to this article. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and mazawati@yahoo.com.