The bodies of women

In a landmark 1973 case Roe vs Wade the US recognised womenrsquos right to abortion as being in keeping with their Constitution Last week the journal Politico published a leaked draft of a ruling seeking to overturn the right framed by Conservative male judges because ldquoThe inescapable conclusion is that a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nationrsquos historyand traditionsrdquoIn India we are quite familiar with the bogey man of culture manifesting whenever the phrase womenrsquos rights is whispered Our cultural conservatives routinely reject women and queer peoplersquos autonomy and choices as ldquowesternised influencerdquo The leaked ruling makes you wonder who is under westernised influenceIt is a cliched irony that the kind of people in the US who oppose womenrsquos right to abortion are often the same people who are maskrefusers and antivaxxers because bodily autonomy But these double standards are in keeping with the culture invokedElite masculinity might involve a lot of chest thumping and muscle flexing in defence of culture and tradition but it is other peoplersquos bodies that it risks for this purpose Poor menrsquos bodies must fight in wars The bodies of women must be policed and controlled to prop up the importance of men In their nervous world view culture is so fragile it is brought to its knees if a woman wears a sleevelesstop it seemsBanning abortion does not decrease the number of abortions but simply increases the number of illegalmdashhence dangerousmdashabortions by unqualified practitioners Many who seek to terminate their pregnancies did not even get pregnant in an atmosphere of choice and consent Choices about womenrsquos bodies are rarely made by women themselves Rather every small thing from how to manage menstruation whom to have sex with how to have sex availing contraception and the right quality of care is determined by a complex matrix of controlmdashon the basis of religion caste gender the sensitive egos and imminent heart attacks of family elders the dismissiveness of politicians who behave like the family elders of all society the callousness of policy makers and the prejudices of healthcare providers The rights women wrest for themselves from this dragnet of power and whims are constantly begrudged and all too easily lost as men trade powerWhy should we care so much about the overturning of a right in the US some might askAbortion may not be illegal in India but it has been subject to constant conditionalities and continues to be subject to tremendous family control and social stigma yaniki culture As a result one study showed that 49 per cent of women surveyed in Maharashtra believed it was illegal for unmarried women and only five per cent of women surveyed in Madhya Pradesh knew it was legal in general Abortion becomes quite okay when it is a matter of son preference then too not chosen by the person whose body it is The state itself has a dark history of forced hysterectomies in Indiamdashunder family planning schemes in the Emergency or more recently on women agricultural workers in Maharashtrarsquos sugar industry Womenrsquos bodily autonomy is a tenuous oneIt is the culture that men seek to protect that makes women everywhere anxious when women elsewhere lose their rights For that culture is a global boyrsquos club called patriarchy which feeds on the bodies of othersParomita Vohra is an awardwinning Mumbaibased filmmaker writer and curator working with fiction and nonfiction Reach her at paromitavohramiddaycom