ABORTION RIGHTS: ESSAYEZ DE CHOISIR POUR MOI!

More compassionate medical practitioners who bloody know from the mess of the operating tables the terrible guilt and pain that women undergo try to comfort their patients by lying to them, telling them that even if they did not choose to get an abortion, they still would have had a miscarriage.


IN DEFENSE OF JULIANA TERSOL
SB Alojamiento

I read with dread and indignation Mindanao Times’ September 23, 2009 story about the Regional Trial Court’s ruling that sentenced one named Juliana Tersol to a maximum of 20 years jail term. Her crime: "intentional abortion with homicide.” RTC likewise ordered Juliana to pay an P50,000 indemnity to her victim’s next of kin. The rape victim, Carmelita Uray, died in November of 1998, from complications (acute renal failure and sepsis) resulting from the abortion she underwent.

“As between the detailed accounts of the prosecution’s witnesses, and the denials of the accused Juliana Tersol,” Mindanao Times writer Nef Luczon quotes the verdict, “this court gives more weight to the former.” At large is Jeraclio Tabaranza, the man who raped, impregnated and brought Carmelita to the house of Juliana.

The case has reduced Juliana to an “abortionist” which, if the CBCP-led discourse on reproductive health issues is to be believed, rings like “murderer,” and for that she is going to jail among common-law criminals.

I do not know Juliana but I must have seen enough of the country to know that she is our neighborhood hilot or mananambal, maybe sometimes called community health worker, or quack doctor, depending on how we momentarily need or can dispense of their skills and services. But of course we can also say that traditional midwives and neighborhood hilots are far more reliable, beside being more affordable, given their years of training and education in real-life emergencies to fuck up in a thing like abortion, but then again, sepsis is as sepsis goes, and when you perform an abortion on command of a man with an emergency in hand, competence flies out of the window as the man’s blunt instruments go in.

I always fault the man? Sure. Especially when he has gotten away and someone else he dragged in has to pay for his time in jail.

The story of Juliana Tersol is of course far from being an isolated case. A visit to the women unit of the Davao Penal Colony in Davao Norte, and maybe elsewhere, would inform us that the rape and murder convicts there were mostly wives of men who actually initiated and perpetrated the crimes. Whether the women actually participated in the commission of these crimes, or they just tried to protect their men from going to prison after the crime had been committed, is not as important as the fact that at the conclusion of the jury’s grind, the women go to jail too. Even in rich countries such is the case. Studies show that in France and other parts of Europe, women with long-term sentences are all involved in crimes that were committed by or at the initiative of a man.

I hold a strong kinship with Juliana and Carmelita because in a country where artificial contraception is not allowed by powerful religious institutions, and where abortion is criminalized, women like them are highly defenseless before God and man. More compassionate medical practitioners who bloody know from the mess of the operating tables the terrible guilt and pain that women undergo, a doctor friend related to me, try to comfort their patients by lying to them, telling them that even if they did not choose to get an abortion, they still would have had a miscarriage owing to that or this abnormality in this particular pregnancy. How comforting that lyings like this can go a long way in helping women reclaim their healthy minds and their right to their bodies and their precarious lives.

Still, this is no substitute to squarely facing the issues. In the face of the crimes that are committed daily against women and the bodies of women, when will our country ever start to bravely and sensibly address reproductive health rights issues? When, for instance, will women groups bravely speak up and speak back to priests and bishops who get away with accusations of murder?

Data on abortion is underreported in the Philippines, but Guttmacher Institute estimates that around 400,000 abortions occur each year in the country. Some 80,000 women, the same report states, are treated each year for complications arising from induced abortion. Behind these cold statistics are back alley and hospital dramas and maybe court dramas that will have one woman’s incriminating words used against another, as in this case we have above.

And no one sees how maybe someone has only been forced to provide a much needed social service which health and medical institutions are prohibited from providing due to socio-religious and legal sanctions, not to mention curtailed federal budgets to Safe Motherhood projects in Third-World countries, thanks to right-wing lobbyists in the US.