It read:

“I didn’t want to be a mother. I was eighteen. We weren’t in love. I had goals I wanted to accomplish. So I made the hardest decision of my life. It’s not legal here. So I researched it on the Internet. I did it myself. In my room. If things had gone wrong, I could have died. Seeing it come out of me was the worst moment of my life. And I couldn’t tell anyone. Not even my parents. So I carried the secret with me. I felt like this thing was always in my chest, but it was stuck there. All day I’d act normal. Then at night I’d go to my room and cry.”

And a Facebook user perfectly summarised what we feel about it. 

“When you ban abortions, they don’t stop happening, they just become dangerous. ” 

According to Pew Research, 189 countries out of 196 allow abortion for women only if the woman’s life is in danger. The other 6 countries do not even provide this exception. 

According to WHO, 78,000 deaths result from unsafe abortions, annually. 

But do we care? 

In India, the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971, allows for abortion under 12-20 weeks, with certain other caveats written in minuscule script. With the added condition that the abortion will be allowed only if the continuance of the pregnancy poses a serious health risk to the woman. The health risk being death, of course. 

The Catholic church staunchly opposes the practice of abortion, even if the child was conceived through rape, incest or by force, as it deems abortion to be unholy and against the will of God. Ireland, a country with staunch catholic beliefs, bans abortions and sentences the woman who commits the ‘crime’ to 14 years of imprisonment. 

Most states in the US follow the anti-abortion, pro-life route. While there are states that allow abortions, they all come with their own terms and conditions. And might we add, they are not women-friendly at all. 

In every small and every big, developed nation, there is an abortion rule that disallows a woman to make a decision about her own body. And that is why most women end up choosing an illegal, unhygienic way to abort rather than resorting to a safe one. 

All that these anti-abortion laws do is go against the basic human right to choice. The right to make decisions for oneself. The right to decide what happens to us. But all that the state and the state authorities see is a life being cruelly murdered.

How is it that a life that isn’t even born yet matters more than the one who is already living one? 

We women deserve a basic right to choose what happens to our bodies.

Abortion is not something that a bench of men in suits, black ties and with their holier-than-thou outlook should be presiding on. It’s not their decision to take in the first place. It’s about a woman’s body and she should be able to do whatever she wants to do with it.

We’re parading every other day to keep women safe; for rights that we should have as human beings, without having to ask for them. And yet, here we are asking for another one, when we shouldn’t even have to. 

It’s 2017! It’s high time we legalised abortion.