For Safe Abortion

THE news that only a section of the population sample surveyed in ten different cities of the country know about the passage of the abortion bill and its conversion into full-fledged law after receiving the Royal Assent two months ago is indeed something to brood over. The outcome of the survey conducted by the Centre for Research Environment, Health and Population Activities (CREHPA) clearly reveals the ignorance of the Nepalese towards their rights and privileges. The message we get from this survey is surely a discouraging one. The media has played its part to disseminate information about the passage of the bill six months back. But, it seems that the Nepalese, even the educated ones, have not still developed the habit of keeping tab of the media. Now, to refer to the more serious part of the lapses that have been traced in our society, we can say that illiterate and uninformed villagers who are still unaware about the passage of the bill must still be practicing illegal abortion.

Many women lose their precious lives after going through a painful and unhealthy practice of aborting pregnancies. Those who still think that it is banned by the law must be risking their lives for no reason. This is where the media and the non-government organisations must really focus their attention. They should waste no time in stepping up the advocacy campaigns to the far-flung districts so as to inform everyone about the bill, which grants them the permission to abort pregnancies if they pose a threat to their lives. The bill was passed after a protracted debate among the intellectuals, parliamentarians and the media people. The sad part of the story is that if women still continue to lose their lives through unsafe abortions, then the bill on abortion rights would not be meaningful. Now that people have been given the rights to abort fatal pregnancies, the government must be on its toes ensuring that proper medical facilities are installed in health posts and hospitals for the purpose of carrying out safe abortions. It should also make sure that only trained medical professionals are allowed to carry out the abortions in a clean and disinfected setting. Generating awareness and developing trained manpower and facilities would certainly help to bring down the mortality rate of women whose labour and expertise are priceless for a developing country like Nepal.

Civic Society & Societal Ills

WHILE releasing the book entitled "Directives to assist the victims of Social Crimes" during a function organised by the Nepal Police Headquarters, the participants, as per a news item carried by this daily the other day, were informed about the costs that both the nation and society have to bear from keeping someone who had committed a social crime in prison for a long time. That any society, be it of a developed nation or a developing country, has its share of unsociable members hardly needs any elaboration here. Also, the fact that the concerned authorities, to ensure that the anti-social actions of these wayward members of the society do not meddle in the smooth functioning of the society, have enacted relevant laws to book them and built correctional institutions, including prisons, to keep them there for the duration of their respective sentences so that they could mend their erratic behaviour, attitudes and actions. All this, of course, entails considerable cost for both the government and society to bear with in the long run. This is more so in countries where, for reasons best known to their respective law enforcement agencies and civic societies, crime rates are burgeoning while, at the same time, the concerned authorities are at their wits' end in apprehending and housing these anti-social elements in correctional institutions. While the need for the concerned authorities to delve into the root causes of such an alarming phenomenon besetting their respective societies is always there, what also goes without saying is that any increase in social crimes within any society is also a ready pointer into that society's very configuration.

For, as all know, a society is a living entity that always tries to evolve amidst the various pushes and pulls of its members hailing from all spheres and walks of life. This is more pronounced in developing nations' societies since they, in their common endeavour to catch up with the developed nations' societies, are invariably exposed to internal and external socio-cultural influences that could bring about societal dislocations in their societal fabric in the form of, among others, rising social crimes. As such, if social crimes are to be minimised, then both the members of the civic society and concerned authorities should work hand-in-hand to come up with necessary short and long-term schemes to bring about positive behavioural and attitudinal changes in the people from all walks of Nepalese life.