research
Posted By Sika on March 28, 2008
In the process of attempting to look for funding for a friend for a VCT (Voluntary testing and counseling) and Teen Centre in Mzuzu, I found this report. I highly recommend anyone coming here read it as it is all about sex here in Malawi. One of the interesting things to me is that most women admitted to gyn wards are there for complications from illegal abortions.
I think it says something about a recognition on a deep, instinctual level that there is a difference between a fetus and a child that women all over the world have abortions in huge numbers, regardless of religious, cultural, societal, or familial factors, and even in spite of previously (or currently)held beliefs. I think the sheer numbers tell a story about more instinctive understandings of humanity, even if we don’t or can’t agree on exactly when potential ends and humanness begins.
And maybe our instinctive understanding, our instinctive and collective decision making as regards these issues will change over time. Maybe that will happen when carrying a pregnancy to term is no longer a deadly proposition, which it is, especially here but also in the States, where midwives lose mothers far too often, and where there are significant other complications as well.
But as it is now, there is an understanding that is rarely talked about and is often legislated against, that the potential of life must be weighed carefully, but not automatically as more than the lives already being lived.
I’m leaving this unlocked now, but I reserve the right to chicken out later and split this post and lock part of it.
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