Dear Editor,
The article ‘Break the taboo against abortion now!’ in the SN of August 15, 2014 rightly calls for safe and affordable abortion services in Guyana.
In our small and evolving society, as with so many things, it must be difficult to come to grips with the responsibility to provide a health care system with doctors, midwives and nurses who on the one hand have to fight to keep mothers and babies alive and healthy, while at the same time provide services for the termination of pregnancies. But those conversations are not happening, and it is not clear yet why the public health system is not providing termination services when it seems that there is private sector support, as there always was in Guyana. Is it that the termination of services legislation was only enforced to legalise the private doctors who provide abortions?
Is it proper to talk about abortions at the same time as talking about the medical services for couples who desire children of their own bodies?
In Guyana, the consequences of the decision to abort or not to abort are left with the woman or the girl. But what about men? What is our responsibility to women – apart from reinforcing the views of God the man who apparently punishes women more for aborting than the men who put the sperm there; or the men who preach and reinforce the shaming which goes along with the decision to terminate a pregnancy?
The Guyana Medical Council register indicates that 13 of the 16 doctors registered to do terminations have male sounding names; the Minister of Health and the senior medical staff who are responsible for the provision of safe services, the policies, the budgets and the decisions about whether women and girls can get safe and affordable services and products are men.
Men are active participants in our rape culture, and men define the masculinity which does not include caring for unplanned/unexpected children. Men sometimes give the money for abortions and walk away afterwards; or come back to claim the trophy child.
Men therefore can change the world in which women have to make the choice around termination. In the now, men should contribute to Breaking the Taboo around abortion. In the now and the long term, men might want to use their power to commit to ensuring that whenever our sperm meets an egg and a foetus is created, we will ensure that we have a society in which the woman or girl is not faced with a choice of abortion that is based on our criminal behaviour or neglect, and that the child though unexpected, becomes wanted, loved and cared for by us.
Yours faithfully,
Vidyaratha Kissoon
