Rights to choose — Chouchou

Key Events:

• Female genital mutilation: Girl’s rights — to defend their body
• Abortion: Women’s rights v.s. babies’ rights — to defend their body v.s. baby’s life
• Legal to kill the disabled baby? — baby’s life

Female genital mutilation

Female genital mutilation (FGM) [1]includes procedures that intentionally alter or cause injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. The procedure has no health benefits for girls and women, can cause severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later cysts, infections, as well as complications in childbirth and increased risk of newborn deaths. FGM is mostly carried out on young girls between infancy and age 15, during the age which they cannot choose but accept. The public opinions give women no air to breathe, whether to obey or to be claimed lacking in virtue by the public. FGM is a violation of the human rights of girls and women.

• More than 200 million girls and women alive today have been cut in 30 countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia where FGM is concentrated. 
• Bangladesh is the main country which still keeps the tradition of FGM.

There is an example in Bangladesh that a mother who fought for her own rights and didn’t accept FGM when she was young, be trusted to accept it by her own daughter. It’s not only the bystanders, especially the male part who benefit from this old bad tradition, banned the right for women, most women themselves judge FGM as an obligation to obey, that’s the saddest part of this event. It’s not fearful if all stand up to resist, the real threaten is all the oppressions are used to it. There is even no voice to fight for their own rights.

Abortion

In April 1992, abortion was thrust onto the center stage of U.S. politics again, which threatened to severely restrict women access to abortion.

“IN THE early 1970s, the women’s movement demanded that abortion be legalized as part of a larger movement for women’s rights. It was clear that, without control over their own reproductive lives, women couldn’t be the equals of men–no matter what advances women made in the job market or in higher education. This is why socialists argue that all women deserve the right to control their own bodies, without interference from anyone.” [2]

Let alone whether it is the right for women to abortion or if the right of abortion leads to the unequal role women play in the society, is there any possible way for their baby to fight for the right to live while women are fighting for the right to abort?

Legal to kill the disabled baby?

There is still debate on whether it is legal to kill the disabled baby after they born. As a life, nobody can kill them with no punishment, but as it is so young and small, as well as some parents would wonder whether their children will live a happy and normal life if they are disabled. If not satisfied as other people on the earth, why bother to give them the opportunity to suffer. Kill them because of the empathy, but killing with whatever excuses is still killing. That’s why countries differ from each other on their law about this issue. Although no exact answer, this arouse us to think about:

• What is right?
• What is the right to choose?
• What is the right right?
• What if there is no choice to choose?
• What if defending your right sacrifices other’s rights?
• What if the “environment”, society and public opinions, thrust you to choose?
• What our choices’ influence, to people around, to the whole society?
• What can we do, and what should we do?

References:

• [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_genital_mutilation
• [2] https://socialistworker.org/2013/11/01/abortion-every-womans-right

P.S.

Body politics: How Power of individual influence the whole society

• Nature is subjected to an absolute organization, to determined laws, to a complete order and a finished design, from which it will never depart — to such a degree, indeed, that if you look carefully and with keen sight, from the smallest invisible atom up to such large bodies of the world of existence as the globe of the sun or the other great stars and luminous spheres, whether you regard their arrangement, their composition, their form or their movement, you will find that all are in the highest degree of organization and are under one law from which they will never depart. – Some Answered Questions, p. 3.
• The body politic may be likened to the human organism. As long as the various members and parts of that organism are coordinated and cooperating in harmony, we have as a result the expression of life in its fullest degree. When these members lack coordination and harmony, we have the reverse, which in the human organism is disease, dissolution, death. Similarly, in the body politic of humanity dissension, discord and warfare are always destructive and inevitably fatal. All created beings are dependent upon peace and coordination, for every contingent and phenomenal being is a composition of distinct elements. As long as there is affinity and cohesion among these constituent elements, strength and life are manifest; but when dissension and repulsion arise among them, disintegration follows. This is proof that peace and amity, which God has willed for His children, are the saving factors of human society, whereas war and strife, which violate His ordinances, are the cause of death and destruction. Therefore, God has sent His Prophets to announce the message of goodwill, peace and life to the world of mankind. – The Promulgation of Universal Peace, pp. 98-99.