No Uterus. No Opinion.

The recent Alabama law banning abortion sparked worldwide outrage. Even if people weren't comfortable with the law as such, the trigger point for the outrage were the comments of the Republican party members. Leaving those stupid and thoughtless comments aside,this post is aimed to focus on the abortion laws that are present all over the world.

According to The Washington Post, only 60 countries out of the 195 countries of the world provide legal access to safe abortion.In the remaining 130 countries, abortion is banned with varying policies. Some 26 countries around the world have completely made abortion illegal without any exceptions, and in other countries, abortion laws might take into account the mental and physical health of the woman, the socioeconomic background, rape and incest or if the abortion is jeopardizing the life of the woman giving birth. Do note that some countries might take all of these factors into account and some other would take only one or two of these into account. Some countries have a specific time duration for abortion after a baby is formed, if you haven't opted for an abortion before that time period ends, then you're legally bound to carry the baby till it's delivered.

In India, termination of pregnancy is permitted for the first 20 gestation weeks, after which an abortion requires a court order. There are ethical and conservative rules that back the illegality of abortions. But in the end, it should fall upon the hands of the woman to choose to carry a baby or not.

According to the findings of The World Health Organisation, the illegality of abortions have little to no effect in reducing the number of abortions in the world. Banning abortions only drives it to be done in dark places in dangerous ways. Keeping aside all the other rights that a woman needs, the most basic of them must be to have a say on her own body. If governments are going to talk about the rights of a fetus that hasn't taken a sniff of this world, why have they clearly not looked into the rights of a woman over her own body?

No woman must be jailed for terminating a pregnancy that she isn't mentally or physically ready to bear. No woman must be allowed to die, trying to illegally abort her rapist's child. No woman must be allowed to bear the burden of feeding an extra mouth, in her already poverty stricken state. No woman, and I repeat, NO woman must be allowed to bring a child into this world against her will, for the benefit of both the mother and the child.