Abortions: Progressive Judgments Notwithstanding, Physical And Mental Trauma Still Persists In India

I always dreamt of being a mother, of holding a child of my own in my arms. I always imagined that I would hear the giggles of my baby and be supported by my partner. But when I was faced with the tough reality of letting a baby growing inside me go, regardless of my ability to keep it, without any support from the biological father and continuous bashing of my character by doctors, hospital staff and other patients, the grief I felt was unbearable.

The times have changed. No longer am I looking forward to being a mother. The idea of motherhood brings to me an overwhelming sense of despair. A part of me died during those 15 days when I was admitted to AIIMS Delhi to get an abortion.

It is been almost three months now and I cannot sleep alone and peacefully. I hear voices and flashes of women screaming and doctors taunting and yelling keep popping up in my head every time I close my eyes. My anxiety is through the roof and my trust in relationships has altered completely. My relational and sexual life has drastically cha­nged and a constant fear grips me all the time.

Abortion laws were implemented in our country half a century back. Recently, there was a landmark judgment by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud that said that artificial distinction between married and unmarried women cannot be sustained and that women must have the autonomy to have free exercise of abortion rights. However, there is a stark contrast in the amended laws and implementation when it comes to accessing and exercising the right.

How abortion is made inaccessible

The New York-based Centre for Repro­ductive Rights published in 2021 a report titled, “Legal Barriers to Accessing Safe Abortions in India: A Fact Finding Study”, in collaboration with Delhi-based Centre for Constitutional Law, Policy, and Governance of the National Law University. The study found that cultural biases ranging from general abortion stigma to patriarchal ideas about women’s role in society have a powerful influence on service providers’ decisions to deny abortion care.

Being a journalist, I have heard, read and covered such judgments and reports on various news portals. However, I never thought that one day I will be on the other side of the table facing what these women narrated in reports about accessibility to abortion.

On June 9, after returning from a trip, which I thought would be a break from work and health issues, I realised that my periods were late. Initially, I thought it might be because of stress, but I also had spotting in between. Finally, to stay on the safer side, I decided to take a pregnancy test and stood anxiously and looked continuously at the stopwatch for results. In the next 20 seconds, my whole world turned topsy-turvy, as the test turned out to be positive, and I ran from one room to another in utter desperation.

Amid this whole ongoing paranoia, I informed the biological father who was my classmate in college. To my shock and disbelief, he refused to take any responsibility and instead in brutal coldness accused me of framing and defaming him.  My whole body and mind shook with fear and chaos the whole day, and I had suicidal thou­ghts. Somehow, I gathered some courage in the evening to visit a gynaecologist for an ultrasound test. There, the receptionist asked me about my marital status, and soon I noticed a sense of judgement in their eyes regarding the legitimacy of my pregnancy.

After the diagnosis, the doctor informed me that it was an ectopic pregnancy, a complication where the zygote grows in the fallopian tube instead of the uterus. The fallopian tube would eventually rupture, because it cannot handle a growing embryo. It scared me to no end when I was told that it could lead to internal bleeding and eventually to a painful death. I was aware of what this condition could translate into, and pills offered no solution. I was shocked and tried to reconcile myself with this fact as I lay on my bed alone.

However, the doctor did not just inform me about the pregnancy. Her slut-shaming and comments on my sexuality were complementary along with the diagnosis. She said, “Tum ladki ho, tumhe dhyan rakhna chahiye tha aur kahan se aayi ho tum (After all, you are a girl. You should have taken precautions. By the way, where are you from)?” Her piercing words still haunt me and make me wonder how a woman has to bear the whole responsibility of abortion and there is not even a thought about how difficult it is for a woman to deal with the physical and mental trauma it entails.

After being casually slut-shamed, I decided to call one of my friends in AIIMS Delhi, who advised me to get admitted to the emergency immediately. I felt some relief to know that I would be in a safe, caring environment at the AIIMS, owing to its reputation in the country. But soon my delusion broke as I entered the hospital. While waiting in endless queues for my ultrasound tests, I was asked questions about the biological father consistently and comments on my sexual life were passed casually everywhere.

While I was in the labour room sharing a single bed with a woman expecting childbirth soon, there was complete mayhem breaking all around. My pulse rate rose from 120 to 130 because of anxiety, comments and loud noise that day. I preferred death that day and thought it would have been better had I not got the diagnosis done and instead died because of the consequences inherent to the condition.

There is no doubt about the quality of healthcare services provided in AIIMS regarding abortion. But the problem arises when you are unmarried and pregnant. To add insult to injury, while waiting in long queues and dealing with poor administrative services, there is judgement and moral policing about your life, from strangers and staff alike.

Every morning I used to sleep with uncertainty about life. The question of whether I would wake up the next morning or not always turned my nights sleepless.

As the country is progressing towards the advancement of healthcare, what about the advancement of patient care and treatment by healthcare workers, especially in sensitive issues like pregnancy and abortion?

Even though I had a close, adult female friend who accompanied me all the time, as a legal obligation for the abortion procedure, the doctor forced me to inform my family and threatened to not treat me if didn’t. After a lot of arguments about how it is beyond legal jurisdiction to ask someone to inform parents about any procedure if the patient is an adult, she replied with an air of moral superiority, “Dekho legally toh it is allowed, par morally tum inform karo warna main kuch nahi kar sakti (You see legally, it is allowed. But morally speaking if you want me to help you, inform your parents).”

This was not the end, still. Whenever she would come in for rounds, the derision and judgment would come along and the fact I was unmarried and had sex was overemphasised every time she passed eerie looks on me.

The nurses and administrative staff regularly asked me uncomfortable questions, like “You are unmarried, then how did this happen?” Co-patients made the situation worse by asking personal questions and passing nasty comments. One woman patient advised me, “You should get married now and you should think about your parents before doing anything like this.”

Abortion as a favour

There was a strange feeling of helplessness that I experienced while I was in the hospital. Even though I had a right to access healthcare, still every time I was reminded in different ways that it was a favour.

As abortion laws are getting reformed in India, the right to access to abortion care is still not that acceptable socially, especially if one is unmarried. Access to abortion is given as a favour to the unmarried woman, not as a legal right. The draconian aspect of accessing the facilities of an abortion procedure is that healthcare providers reinforce the social restrictions to seeking the procedure, especially when the woman is unmarried.

It is high time that the healthcare providers realised that abortion is mentally a very taxing procedure to deal with, especially when one is an unmarried woman in a country like ours. The taunts and the judgements make everything so much more difficult and amplify the grief, the guilt and the fear.

On a normal day in the middle of work, I suddenly feel hot flashes running through my body. I have to take anxiety pills to make myself calm from the evocative nightmares, noise and panic attacks, and I dread the thought of facing that helplessness again. There is no regret and guilt in my mind for the sexual relationship I had, but the absence of a biological partner and the validation and acceptance given by society and healthcare providers to such irresponsible behaviour of men escalates my helplessness and makes me ponder over my existence as a woman and its implications for women’s rights in our country.

I feel fortunate to have the privilege of being able to access safe, high-quality healthcare services, being fully aware of my legal rights, and also finding the platform to voice my story.

(This appeared in the print edition as "A Nightmare Called Abortion")