Are women born unequal? Are they inferior to anyone? Are they not having any rights in the world today?
Man has always decided about almost everything in his world, but when it comes to women, they are not allowed to decide. Whether she wants to become pregnant or not is the question she doesn’t get any right to decide. After all she owns her body and what happens to it is her concern so what makes this world decide for her? Whether she should be pregnant or not is very much her choice. Yet she doesn’t have a choice. The man decides when and how she should get pregnant. Why she should is again another question the society and the man decides.
Woman are as much equal as any other so she should have her say in case of her own body. She can bear a child if she needs to and can refuse to have one also. If she believes she wants to adopt one then she should.
But there are legalities in all of the above. If she is in a marriage, it is a concerted decision whether the couple should have a child or not. There has to be a consensus on that. If she has refused before hand during pre-nuptial phase to have kids of her own and insisted on adoption, the man should decide whether he should go ahead or not. Later on, he should not object to her decisions since they had decided earlier mutually not to have.
So laying down the ground rules before marriage is very important. Marriage is an institution where both the parties are equal participants. So there should not be discrepancies and fights over these touchy issues.
Again there is no doubt who gets to decide whether it’s a boy or a girl, no one does at the moment. Supposedly for believers God decides that and for the other readers, nature decides! Whosoever decided that issue, the choice should be accepted by all. Unless someone comes up with identifying the gender type before impregnation.
Abortion is an issue where there is so much of bad blood flowing. Who gets to decide that again? It all depends on the individual, you say! I differ on certain grounds. No one has the right to murder someone so if there is a child conceived and then the woman is going for abortion after a few months, she is doing injustice to the child. The case differs in every circumstances. If a woman doesn’t like the man she is cohabiting with, why is she doing it? You may say, marriage compels but ask yourself, can she take precautions way ahead or not? In case of a rape or forced coitus then she has a right to d&c procedure immediately. The perpetrator needs to be convicted too. Rape and forced sex is heinous in nature and not sanctioned anywhere. Similarly murder is culpable homicide.
So the child has rights so does the woman. She has the right to refuse and reject. She has right to do what she wants within the bounds of dharma and not otherwise.
So there can never be consensus on this issue about abortion anywhere. Some countries are coming up with stringent laws which needs to be changed. The verdict depends only upon dharma and nothing else. Murder and rape cannot be tolerated. So there should be stringent laws regarding that.
Every human has the rights to life and decision making about themselves within the confines of the law of the universe. That is defined by Santana dharma.
So a woman should be able to decide on whom she wants to marry and whether she wants to cohabit or not. Marital rape is a crime too. Similarly, she had the right to decide on pregnancy within the bounds of dharma. She can decide whether she wants children by choice or adoption by choice, just like marriage.
Following the path of dharma by both the man and woman is a must and that should never be transgressed.
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