My body. My rules?

She stared at the two lines mocking her. This couldn’t be happening, they had been careful. Too careful, in fact. But that stick couldn’t be lying…or could it? Maybe it was a false positive. Yes, that could be it. Twenty three was no age to bed pregnant. She’d just got out of college and started a job. She could tell Rohan about it but how would he react? 

Would he be angry and ask her to abort? Or would he ask her to marry him? And her parents? How would she explain it to them? She was their perfect daughter. How would she explain the pregnancy? Or the fact that their darling daughter had become an ‘adult’ while they were not watching? Would they even want to talk to her?

But wait. What did she think about this? She didn’t know. Not that did matter really. It didn’t matter, of course. Whether she wanted to keep the baby or not or whether she wanted to give it away…hmm, that sounded good. But what would her relatives think? She couldn’t go through the pregnancy without hiding it from the world. And what about her parents and Rohan themselves, would they be okay with her going through it? Rohan, maybe but her parents?

And could she actually give the baby away once it was born? She had seen it a million times before on TV, moms-to-be putting up their babies for adoption but changing their minds once they see a part of themselves in their hands? Would she be one of them? It was a possibility. Would anyone support her then? She didn’t know. There was too much she didn’t know.

Or maybe she could simply get rid of the baby. It wasn’t even a baby technically right now, just a cell- atleast that’s what science says. She would just be expelling a cell from her body. Yes, that would make it easy. Just. A. Cell.

But who was she fooling? Her heart knew and no technical term could change the reality that a life was growing inside of her, no matter how miniscule.

She had no option. She had to get rid of it and no one could ever know. Not her parents. Not Rohan. Not her best friend. Not a single soul. It’ll be her little secret.

But how would she do it? There was no planned parenthood here. She could go in a clinic and get a procedure performed but she would have been asked a million questions no matter if the law states otherwise. This was the society she lived in. She’d just have to get some pills. Online maybe. Bleeding for a month and pushing out the pregnancy outside of her was a much better option than doing it in a safer manner…

Such teenage pregnancy stories are not uncommon in India or throughout the world.

Every year about 16 million girls aged 15 to 19 and some 1 million girls under 15 give birth —most in low- and middle-income countries.
Complications during pregnancy and childbirth are the second cause of death for 15-19 year-old girls globally.
Every year, some 3 million girls aged 15 to 19 undergo unsafe abortions.
Babies born to adolescent mothers face a substantially higher risk of dying than those born to women aged 20 to 24.

And this is not me, this is the World Health Organization talking based on the teenage pregnancy statistics that are actually available to them. The real situation is much more alarming with millions of such cases going unreported.

Add to this the callous attitude of most governments across the globe, we face a massive problem that no one is talking about. And it is not just deaths but also various life threatening STDs that no one seems to care about.

Also, it seems people other than the female are in a better position to decide what she does with her body. And also apparently it is easier for people to buy guns than for a female to get the healthcare she needs. Yes, that’s looking at you Amurica. 

It’s funny that all the pro-life activists canvassing for the unborn baby do not realize that till the time the birth does not actually take place, they cannot dictate a woman what she can or cannot do with her body. Motherhood in itself is a huge deal, an unwanted one is just a burden that you’re putting on a woman specifically a teenager that she is in no position to handle most probably.

Now I am not suggesting anything or pointing fingers but maybe a change in the attitude of adults as to how they treat adolescents, health services as to how they help the troubled souls and how the governments frame policies for the future generations can go a long way in finding solutions and saving lives.