Professor Uayporn Khueankaew, founder and director of the Women’s Center for Peace and Justice (Baan Din Center), shared her thoughts on the discourse of abortion in Buddhist society. She analyzed this issue according to the Four Noble Truths, stating that the reason these women choose to have an abortion is not because it is a life choice, but because they are forced to choose. These women know well that this suffering is severe and that they cannot raise the child.
With the values that Thai society does not teach men to use contraception, when men do not take responsibility, the suffering falls on women. These women have to find solutions alone, without any societal support. They are stigmatized by society from the moment they become pregnant and are not taken care of, pushed out of school, and when they go to the hospital, the hospital may not support them and may further stigmatize them. They may also be pushed away by family members.
The Buddha would say that destroying life and harming others is a sin. This means that from the moment a man makes a woman pregnant and does not take responsibility, he is harming her, and he is already sinful. The school system that pushes this child out and does not support her during pregnancy is also sinful. The family that pushes her away is committing a sin as well.
Therefore, sin is harming and not supporting others. All of us who stigmatize these women are harming them mentally and spiritually, and that is also a sin…
Uayporn believes that
stigmatizing these women as heartless or sinful mothers is labeling their behavior
without bringing intellectual understanding to empathize with the women’s suffering.
One reality in life that we must accept is that everyone has different life circumstances and varying degrees of choice, or some may have none at all. Another set of sexual education knowledge that has been suppressed in society for a long time is thinking about solutions when facing an unplanned pregnancy. Everyone knows that an unmanageable pregnancy is undesirable. Almost every Thai textbook teaches not to rush into things, but few books tell us how to handle problems when they arise, to minimize the impact on the body and mind.
Because of a sincere belief that every woman has the right to manage her own life
and deserves to live under safety to lead a quality life.
Abortion is not an easy matter
and what many women who decide to have an abortion lose may not just be the pregnancy
but they also lose their morale and self-worth.
Therefore, what we should be aware of is knowledge and understanding
another perspective that we may never have received from sex education classes when we were students.
Source: http://waymagazine.org/safe-medical-abortion/
Referenced from Pro-Voice 3: Campaign for the Right to Access Safe and Legal Abortion on Friday, September 23, 2016, from 10:00 AM to 7:30 PM at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre by the Network Supporting Women’s Choices for Unplanned Pregnancies.