Can I abort my foetus born of rape, please?

A Supreme Court bench constituting Justice Anil Dave and Justice Joseph Kurian, who strangely had no problem agreeing to disagree on hanging a terrorist accused of planting bombs that killed hundreds, had no problem deferring agreement on whether a foetus born of rape should be snuffed out, when censure should have been immediate. The question was referred to a panel of psychologists and doctors as the apex court even paused to consider: "Will killing the child solve everything?"

So while the honourable Supreme Court has come to the correct decision that a 14-year-old may indeed abort the foetus of her rapist, it's been a macabre merry time coming.

There are some questions women should not have to ask the courts about. Doctors should not have to be referred to except to ascertain that said procedure does not risk the child's life - the real child in the case - the 14-year-old victim of rape. And it definitely should not take this long.

In February, a Class 10 student went to doctor Jatin K Mehta in Ahmedabad for typhoid. She was raped, sedated and hushed up with threats. The rape came to light four months later with her pregnancy, which she complained of as "a stomach ache". The courts, of course, needed to consider this. Most people don't, you know, need to consider this. There is, some would argue, nothing to consider. But that's just a victim's point of view. In all fairness, the rapist's point of view and the unaffected passer-by's point of view, must be considered. All the while the foetus - no victim of rape would call it "a child" - continued to grow. It hit 24 weeks by the time the Supreme Court took a decision this week. Medical Termination of Pregnancy is routinely allowed up to 20 weeks. It need not be reiterated that this was not a routine pregnancy.

The high court of Gujarat was kind enough to "express sympathy" and horrifically, afford diet, nutrition, health and education needs for the pregnant child and compensation of one lakh rupees. This act alone indicates the state not only admits to a reparation due but takes ownership of the custody of the child. So let alone the deep psychological trauma of an unwanted pregnancy upon a child already torn by physical violation, will the yet to be born child's education, moral and physical care be the sole moral and physical and fiscal responsibility of the bench that ordered it? Will they provide day care and play with it, since they feel so deeply for this yet unborn child? Will the child take the father's surname? Or would they like it to be called Mr/Ms "Bench"? How do they propose introducing it at social occasions, like say a playground? What does the bench think is the best response to that annoyingly impertinent question women get asked everywhere: "What does his father do?" Will they be taking it home and helping it with homework, instilling it with values, advising it on a career, paying for its education and attending its wedding? Why not? They didn't ask for the child you say. Except they did. The child - the 14-year-old child - who is being forced to bear it, is the one who did NOT ask for the child. She, in fact, did not even know what a pregnancy was. She neither asked to conceive, nor to bear, nor to birth. It is, for all practical purposes, through the state's failure at all levels, the child of the state. Hence, all moral, legal and physical onus for the child then, should ideally rest on the shoulders of those who do demand its birth. Else, what is the form of this vague "sympathy" that the high court expressed? And what is the "everything" that the Supreme Court contemplated whether an abortion would solve?

Also behind all this needless contemplation is the subtext of men unable to comprehend how a woman, or a girl, whose primary function society sees as the need to bear a child, can viciously dislike the prospect of bearing one.

I have news for you sirs: not all women love motherhood and children, not all women are good at it, not all women want it, not all women desire it. But certainly all women vehemently would rather end the life of foetus they didn't want implanted in them in the first place, than have to live with that monstrosity growing inside them like a tumour.

In case you need a shorter form of that: Women are not obliged to grow the seeds men plant just because they can't control where they plant them.

Better the courts restrict their contemplations to why men are incapable of controlling themselves and whether doctors and psychologists can come up with a reason for that - now that's a panel I would like to see in a huddle - than whether women, minor or not, can obtain "permission" to obstruct eventualities they didn't ask to be a part of in the first place.

Thanks SC, but no thanks. No favour done. It was not your choice to make. The verdict should have been instantaneous. The woman, the girl, the child, the real one, said no the first time she was asked. Pin that on a verdict somewhere.