by Sarika Arya
The stage is initially dark. A spotlight suddenly turns on Center Stage. The actress's first lines must be spoken, loud, screeching, sharp, clear, and strong, and, most importantly, coincide exactly with the turning on of the spotlight. This is a highly physical piece throughout, and may be subject to interpretation. The actress must have a full and powerful voice, but give off an ambience of weakness, exhaustion, and defeat: her physicality must be matched by strength in sound, since it will not be matched in strength of character.
JOSEPHINE: STOP! (Pause.) I screamed it. (Shorter pause. The lines are spoken quickly, clearly, frantically, without punctuation.) I screamed at the top of my lungs as I watched As I watched that soldier that solider take out Take out the gun slowly Slowly as if in slow motion Slowly Very Slowly We were walking We were walking to the fields Fields full of life Full of life Full of sweet life tea lives sugarcane bananas with mamma and sister working working Sweating working weaving Laughing working planting Resting working harvest harvest harvest Us walking walking THERE. (The lines have been building up to this moment, matched by the actress's physicality. Perhaps she is sitting then slowly rising, or walking in position then jumping forward, in a sudden movement, towards the audience. Creeping and then arriving. There is a pause.) STOP. (She points, accusingly, at the audience.) THERE. (Suddenly, in a whisper.) Gun. (At a normal sound level. Taking in mind punctuation now.) A big shiny black gun. And a boy. A soldier. Three. There were three. Pointing at Miriam, and pointing at me. And the three boys, soldiers, the men, that evil men, they destroyed Miriam and they destroyed me. But they didn't hurt themselves. They were machines. Their body had taken on the same mission as their gun. There was no separation between men and the metal. They had the same mission. One goal: capture and destroy.
(Beat. Speaking in monotone.)
I am 29 years old, and I have been raped. I have been raped again. And again. And again. And again. Another machine came to my house. He gagged me. And then he raped me. Again.
(Beat. Speaking with emotion.)
Now what? (Pause.) There is nothing left for me here. (Pause.) Everyone knows my story. (Suddenly in another moment, as if reliving a past experience.) He raped me! (Acting as someone else.) Stupid child! You spread your legs girl. You made it eaaaaasssssssy. (Still in character as the imaginary villager the actresses hisses and clicks her tongue, as if catcalling.)
(The actress, as herself now, heaves a loud, long, yet lifeless and defeated sigh that moves, shakes, and exhausts her whole body. Beat. Speaking matter-of-factly. As if unaffected by what she is saying.)
In the community, they made such fun of me that I had to leave the village and live in the forest. Today, the only thing that I can think about is that I want an abortion. I am hungry; I have no clothes and no soap. I don't have any money to pay for medical care. It would be better if I died with the baby in my womb.
(The actress is now standing in a neutral stance, center stage, with the spotlight still on her. There is a moment's silence, while she looks out into the audience. Her body remains completely still, highlighting the fact that she closes and opens her eyes – just once, without moving her head, and then – BLACKOUT.)
This monologue was inspired by an Amnesty International report on sexual and reproductive rights around the world and a true story from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The report can be viewed by downloading the PDF providing 'extra information' on this website. The story of Josephine is located on page 8.
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Showing posts with label Abortion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Abortion. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Friday, June 19, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
The Uterus and its Discontents
-- Pruttiporn Kerdchoochuen
Abortion, and a woman's right to obtain it legally and safely regardless of her reasons, is an issue that I feel very, very strongly about. Yes, it is a difficult subject, and a difficult decision, but one that needs to be the mother's, not the state's or the church's.
A recent New York Times article, however, has put my belief to the test. In this piece, writer Sam Roberts explore the practice of baby sex selection and the preference of baby boys to baby girls in Indian-, Chinese- and Korean-American families. According to a study published last year (cited by Roberts),
This practice, I'm sure, is excellent fodder for the anti-choice, anti-abortion camp (I refuse to use that misleading term pro-life in the same way that I refuse to use states-rights as a euphemism for right-to-own-slaves in the on going debate about the causes of the American Civil War, but I digress). Another slippery slope argument could easily be - and already has been - fashioned out of the issue: If we make abortions completely legal and readily accessible (which it is, to a certain extent), then we leave the door wide open - complete with a smiling doorman and a plush red carpet - for "unnecessary" selective abortions such as these.
But it's worth looking at the alternative here: Would allowing - or rather, forcing - a baby girl to be born to a family that does not want her really be a better option? While some argue that parents would grow to love their child regardless, why should we make a child grow up with such a chip on her shoulder? In addition, a reverse slippery slope situation could also be argued: If we were to set such restrictions on what is "necessary" and what isn't, then the circle could be redrawn and made narrower and narrower. As many anti-abortion activists argue, a danger to the mother's "mental health" does not count as a "real" medical threat, and therefore provides no sufficient ground for an abortion (I'm calling shenanigans on that one). Agreeing to limit when a woman can get an abortion, while seeming a sensible compromise today, could seriously - to crassly put it - come back to bite us in the ass. Such a decision would allow room for society, doctors, the government and PEOPLE WHO DO NOT OWN THE UTERUS IN QUESTION in general to pass judgment on and dictate what a woman can do with her own uterus and its contents.
This is why I consider myself pro-choice: I believe that it is the government's duty to protect a woman's fundamental human right to make informed, independent decisions regarding her body and her health (including mental and reproductive health), regardless of what decision she ends up making. This latter part is nobody's business, the former, everybody's.
As for issue number 1, well, just because something has been accepted as standard practice for generations does not make it right. It used to be accepted that women should remain inside the home, and that different races were inherently unequal. I think it is necessary that each generation should reevaluate the accepted values and ideas of their parents, not just adopt them wholesale because it has "always been that way." If the latter were the case, democracy, to us, would still mean old, rich dudes voting. Culture is a living thing, and must continually evolve and change. This is how progress is made.
Abortion, and a woman's right to obtain it legally and safely regardless of her reasons, is an issue that I feel very, very strongly about. Yes, it is a difficult subject, and a difficult decision, but one that needs to be the mother's, not the state's or the church's.
A recent New York Times article, however, has put my belief to the test. In this piece, writer Sam Roberts explore the practice of baby sex selection and the preference of baby boys to baby girls in Indian-, Chinese- and Korean-American families. According to a study published last year (cited by Roberts),
"In general, more boys than girls are born in the United States, by a ratio of 1.05 to 1. But among American families of Chinese, Korean and Indian descent, the likelihood of having a boy increased to 1.17 to 1 if the first child was a girl, according to the Columbia economists. If the first two children were girls, the ratio for a third child was 1.51 to 1 — or about 50 percent greater — in favor of boys."These figures are, according to Roberts, a result of families employing various sex selection methods including "in vitro fertilization, sperm sorting and abortion." The preference for boys is, undeniably, a cultural phenomenon: The posterity of the family line (passed through the male side) is one of the main reasons for such a skewered preference. As one Chinese-American professional woman recounts in her interview,
“Early on, after the two girls were born and another two years went by and there was not a third, I found myself in the living room with four or five older relatives in a discussion of ‘Wouldn’t it be lovely for you to have a boy?’ It’s extremely uncomfortable.”The article touches on two big issues for me: 1) how much should "cultural" practices and beliefs be tolerated when they conflict with the modern, liberal, democratic values (for example, the idea of fundamental, universal human rights) upon which our legal and political values are universally based? and 2) Should selective practices such as these be protected as a legal choice?
This practice, I'm sure, is excellent fodder for the anti-choice, anti-abortion camp (I refuse to use that misleading term pro-life in the same way that I refuse to use states-rights as a euphemism for right-to-own-slaves in the on going debate about the causes of the American Civil War, but I digress). Another slippery slope argument could easily be - and already has been - fashioned out of the issue: If we make abortions completely legal and readily accessible (which it is, to a certain extent), then we leave the door wide open - complete with a smiling doorman and a plush red carpet - for "unnecessary" selective abortions such as these.
But it's worth looking at the alternative here: Would allowing - or rather, forcing - a baby girl to be born to a family that does not want her really be a better option? While some argue that parents would grow to love their child regardless, why should we make a child grow up with such a chip on her shoulder? In addition, a reverse slippery slope situation could also be argued: If we were to set such restrictions on what is "necessary" and what isn't, then the circle could be redrawn and made narrower and narrower. As many anti-abortion activists argue, a danger to the mother's "mental health" does not count as a "real" medical threat, and therefore provides no sufficient ground for an abortion (I'm calling shenanigans on that one). Agreeing to limit when a woman can get an abortion, while seeming a sensible compromise today, could seriously - to crassly put it - come back to bite us in the ass. Such a decision would allow room for society, doctors, the government and PEOPLE WHO DO NOT OWN THE UTERUS IN QUESTION in general to pass judgment on and dictate what a woman can do with her own uterus and its contents.
This is why I consider myself pro-choice: I believe that it is the government's duty to protect a woman's fundamental human right to make informed, independent decisions regarding her body and her health (including mental and reproductive health), regardless of what decision she ends up making. This latter part is nobody's business, the former, everybody's.
As for issue number 1, well, just because something has been accepted as standard practice for generations does not make it right. It used to be accepted that women should remain inside the home, and that different races were inherently unequal. I think it is necessary that each generation should reevaluate the accepted values and ideas of their parents, not just adopt them wholesale because it has "always been that way." If the latter were the case, democracy, to us, would still mean old, rich dudes voting. Culture is a living thing, and must continually evolve and change. This is how progress is made.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
R.I.P Dr. Tiller, and thoughts on abortion
- - by Pruttiporn Kerdchoochuen
This summer, I hauled my ass (and some seriously hefty luggage) to the small college town of Göttingen, Germany. I'm hoping to raise my five years worth classroom German from third-grade-prattle level to a functional language skill, by interning at a human rights non-profit called die Gesellchaft für bedrohte Völker, or "the society for threatened peoples."
The organization specializes in advocating for prosecuted and oppressed ethnic minority groups worldwide. I'm working with the Near-Eastern department (my boss is originally can often be heard yelling into the phone in German, Kurdish, Arabic or any of the other five languages he speaks), and am learning a great deal about the Baha'is, Kurds, Ahwazi Arabs and all the other minority groups in that region of the world.
I finally moved into my new apartment today, and while having dinner, my housemate and I started talking to get to know each other better. We began talking about politics and religion, and pretty soon, the topic of abortion came up. While I am adamantly and vociferously pro-choice, my new friend, a med student, is somewhat religious and views fetuses, after two weeks or so, as more akin to living babies, with little beating hearts. But even she agrees that, ultimately, women must have the power to make her own choice, as unsavory as it may end up being.
The power to control one's own body and make decisions regarding one's own health is a fundamental human right. To deprive women of such a right, especially in a case of rape or incest, would be sexist, demeaning, medieval and cruel. To allow poor innocent children to be born to parents who may not want them and may be unwilling to provide adequate care for them would be heartless.
This year on May 31, Dr. George Tiller, a reproductive health physician and medical director of an abortion clinic in Wichita, Kansas, was gunned down at his church because of his willingness to perform medically necessary late-term abortions. The murder of Dr. Tiller is, simply put, a terrorist act. It is the use of violence for an ideological goal, the use of terror to discourage and demoralize the opposition. And this should not be tolerated. A movement that spawned and, in a sense, nurtured such hatred - I'm looking at YOU Bill O'Reilly - should take a step back and reevaluate itself. This is religious fundamentalism at work, pure and simple: zealotry inspiring violence against those who think differently.
So please, before we go looking elsewhere for those damn terrorists, just take a goddamn look in our own backyard first.
The organization specializes in advocating for prosecuted and oppressed ethnic minority groups worldwide. I'm working with the Near-Eastern department (my boss is originally can often be heard yelling into the phone in German, Kurdish, Arabic or any of the other five languages he speaks), and am learning a great deal about the Baha'is, Kurds, Ahwazi Arabs and all the other minority groups in that region of the world.
I finally moved into my new apartment today, and while having dinner, my housemate and I started talking to get to know each other better. We began talking about politics and religion, and pretty soon, the topic of abortion came up. While I am adamantly and vociferously pro-choice, my new friend, a med student, is somewhat religious and views fetuses, after two weeks or so, as more akin to living babies, with little beating hearts. But even she agrees that, ultimately, women must have the power to make her own choice, as unsavory as it may end up being.
The power to control one's own body and make decisions regarding one's own health is a fundamental human right. To deprive women of such a right, especially in a case of rape or incest, would be sexist, demeaning, medieval and cruel. To allow poor innocent children to be born to parents who may not want them and may be unwilling to provide adequate care for them would be heartless.
This year on May 31, Dr. George Tiller, a reproductive health physician and medical director of an abortion clinic in Wichita, Kansas, was gunned down at his church because of his willingness to perform medically necessary late-term abortions. The murder of Dr. Tiller is, simply put, a terrorist act. It is the use of violence for an ideological goal, the use of terror to discourage and demoralize the opposition. And this should not be tolerated. A movement that spawned and, in a sense, nurtured such hatred - I'm looking at YOU Bill O'Reilly - should take a step back and reevaluate itself. This is religious fundamentalism at work, pure and simple: zealotry inspiring violence against those who think differently.
So please, before we go looking elsewhere for those damn terrorists, just take a goddamn look in our own backyard first.
Abortion in Numbers
Anti-abortion ideology has been the motivating force behind:
4 kidnappings
406 death threats
8 death in the past 20 years
17 incidents of arson
41 bombings
96 attempted arson or bombings
151 burglaries
390 invasion
1,400 cases of vandalism
1,993 cases of trespassing
100 butyric acid attacks
659 anthrax threats
525 cases of stalking abortion clinics, doctors, and patients
179 cases of assault and battery
Statistics taken from the Minnesota Independent News
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