Vishal Sharma
Indian dentist Savita Hallapanvaar’s death in Ireland raises a much more fundamental question relating to the role of religion in the matters that can potentially determine whether one would live or die. It also raises the question as to whether the flag-bearers of the pro- life thought, who have needlessly held the gift of life hostage to the hopelessly worn out myths, can be allowed to stay relevant any longer. It also raises the question whether people like us who value life will continue to take their seats at the periphery of the amphitheatre of life as mute spectators, while the gladiators, who have continuously mocked at it, take the centre stage and indifferently continue with their gladiatorial affairs.
Religion is a personal affair and should best be professed as such. Its outreach in the matters of medical science, where myths and dogmas, howsoever credited they may be, have no currency, will only adulterate the tenets of reason and pragmatism that the science swears by. It is best to treat them as two separate ideologies that can at best run parallel but not ever coincide. Religion at best has its place in the comfort of our abodes where we give break to our cognitive processes. Science is best practiced at our work places where we are not in our comfort zones. We have seen in the case of Savita what happens when some religious beliefs come calling at the doors of science.
For a country as modern and progressive in outlook as Ireland, it may be difficult for us to imagine that doctors there refused to pull the plug on the foetus in the womb of Savita even when it appeared that the reverse may endanger her life on the misplaced pro-life belief that Ireland lives by. But in Ireland abortions are banned even in situations where the mother may be in veritable jeopardy. This practice is embedded in the belief that life is a divine gift and can’t be terminated even when it has become a curse. This belief underlies the relevant provisions of the Irish law, which is anchored in the catholic thought of Ireland.
When doctors of Savita had to take a call on whom to help survive in the fast developing situation, they allowed themselves to be guided by what every medical practitioner in that country in such situations generally does-follow the legal word. It is, therefore, hard to make a case against what the doctors did for they were captives of the legal architecture of the day. It was too much to expect them to rebel. Nonetheless, it says something about the way Ireland has gone / goes about its business in this day and age that many a right thinking women often cross its frontiers to seek medical assisted termination of pregnancies that have gone terribly wrong and become potentially threatening to the life giver ( read mother) herself.
I could not find the statistics relevant to both the situations to appreciate the subject for better inference. But then this debate is not in any way meant to merely draw conclusions from the available statistics. It is beyond that. It is about knowing the gory truth about how the Irish women are paying with their lives to keep the legend of this belief alive.
India’s response has been on expected lines; it has made predictable noises, which draw upon the accounts of Savita’s husband, about the appropriate investigation into the matter and hauling up the erring. It should insist upon an overarching probe that meets the acceptable standards on such issues and not acquiesce in the one presently instituted. Savita’ husband is reported to have said that the doctors overlooked the extreme misery of her wife in her last moments forcing the family to lodge requests for abortion. He has also alleged that papers relating to the abortion requests made by the family are missing from the Savita’s medical file. This is a serious issue and insinuates at some foul play in the matter even as it is inexplicable how those, who may have removed the request papers from the file, would be affected in the face of an amenable law. All the same, in the absence of request papers, Savita’s poignant narrative that is so inextricably linked to them may not ever find its legitimate space in the inquest discourse of the investigators thereby leading to completely lopsided conclusions.
At the other end of spectrum, the debate also threatens to plunge into the abyss of pro vs anti abortion rheotric. Already there is a clamour that a strong pro-abortion lobby is behind the outrage that escalated in India and elsewhere. It is seeing international condemnation of what is perhaps nothing short of a homicide as an attempt to taint the Irish position in this regard. India, thus, would have to be nuanced in its approach lest it might complicate the matters inconsequentially. It should not be India’s case to make the campaign of justice for Savita as some kind of point scoring enterprise. It should only insist on a proper investigation first and should it emerge that Savita could have been saved with the available medical resources, seek penalty for the involved medical misconduct. It would be important to remember that the prospect of getting international community to coerce Ireland to fall in line on the issue may be titillating, but may easily become counterproductive in case Ireland resolves to put up a stubborn face and stay the course thereafter. The matter being not relating to the affairs of the state would be better pursued, if India decides to plough a lonely furrow.
Ireland is part of a Europe where some countries have given flexible choices to both the medical fraternity and the people. Switzerland and Netherland are two such countries where a life that is in irredeemable peril is allowed to be snuffed out with medical asistance. Both these countries are deeply christian countries, but haven’t allowed some very personal beliefs to override the logic and reason of science, crucially in the matters where physical and metaphysical should not interface at all. They have left it to the people to make informed choices in these matters.
Ireland, for all the arguments that it is making and may make, has forgotten that being pro-life does not mean that in an effort to save a perilous unborn foetus or conversely not terminate it, the life of the mother should be wasted by allowing it to die with it. This is not being pro-life. If anything, this is being anti-life. If Ireland has not discriminated all these years between what is apparently a not too complex a distinction between the two ways of life like so many other countries, it essentially indicates two things; one, its economic advancement notwithstanding, its inner core represented by the values a nation espouses is hollow and second, it is about time it looked inwards to see what it has done all these years to his womenfolk in the garb of the pro-life tenets. Above all, it is important that Ireland for its own sake shifts the onus of conscience keeping finally from the existing anti-life legal paradigm to the people themselves. This will enable Ireland to live down this stigma at least with a modicum of grace.
Follow our WhatsApp channel