The bodies of women

Illustration/Uday Mohite

In a landmark 1973 case, Roe vs Wade, the US recognised women's 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, "The inescapable conclusion is that a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation's history
and traditions."

In India we are quite familiar with the bogey man of culture manifesting whenever the phrase women's rights is whispered. Our cultural conservatives routinely reject women and queer people's autonomy and choices, as "westernised influence". The leaked ruling makes you wonder who is under westernised influence.

It is a cliched irony that the kind of people in the US who oppose women's right to abortion are often the same people who are mask-refusers and anti-vaxxers, because, bodily autonomy. But these double standards are in keeping with the culture invoked.

Elite masculinity might involve a lot of chest thumping and muscle flexing, in defence of culture and tradition, but it is other people's bodies that it risks for this purpose. Poor men's 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 sleeveless
top it seems.

Banning abortion does not decrease the number of abortions, but simply increases the number of illegal - hence, dangerous - abortions by unqualified practitioners. Many who seek to terminate their pregnancies, did not even get pregnant in an atmosphere of choice and consent. Choices about women's 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 control - on 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 power.

Why should we care so much about the overturning of a right in the US, some might ask.

Abortion 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 India - under family planning schemes in the Emergency, or more recently on women agricultural workers in Maharashtra's sugar industry. Women's bodily autonomy is a tenuous one.

It 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 boy's club called patriarchy, which feeds on the bodies of others.

Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at paromita.vohra@mid-day.com