Are We Dead Yet? We Need To Speak Up Against Injustice And Not Just Stare Into The Abyss

In a society that’s plagued by consumerism, materialism and so many other “ism’s”, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised or saddened that many people seem to have lost all vestiges of humanity. And social media tends to throw up all these crazies, like so much flotsam and jetsam washed to the shore!

THIS TOO SHALL PASS
By Punam Bakshi Mohandas

I think we all know that social media can be pretty much a den of iniquity many a time, with a lot of needlessly abusive or vulgar language thrown in. However, something that happened recently roused me to such strong feelings that I could almost understand why people resort to cuss words when frustrated.

So there’s this woman who terms herself a journalist, although she’s more of a social climber from the little I recall of her, who took umbrage to the fact that the Delhi High Court refused to allow a woman to terminate her pregnancy at 24-weeks (PTI, 16^th July 2022) and put this out on Twitter. Now, her tweet happened to show up as I was scrolling through my own Twitter notifications, so I responded by asking what was wrong with that? At 24-weeks, this is a fully-formed human baby – this is tantamount to murder! The woman replies by saying: ‘Read the article. It’s less than 24-weeks. And are you aware of the MTP Act’? Let’s leave the MTP Act for the nonce, I say, tartly. Did you read the article you yourself posted? The woman is three days short of 24-weeks – big difference in your book, I’ll bet!

So then this so-called journalist climbed off her suffragette soapbox long enough to block me! No skin off my nose; she wasn’t and isn’t someone I care to know, anyway. But the sheer callousness shocked me. She’s a Christian; isn’t the Church always on at us about how abortion is a sin? Where was this monster when Mass was being read out and the priest was giving his little homilies?! For want of a condom, humanity was lost! Instead of reading up on the MTP Act, she’d do well to read Friedrich Nietzsche: “He who fights against monsters should see to it that he does not become a monster in the process”.

At 24-weeks, that’s six months! Premature babies are born at six months and doctors do everything to save their lives; and here, this idiot was criticizing the court for not allowing a woman to kill her baby at six months! What necessity could have led to allowing the pregnancy to continue for so long? The background is that the petitioner is an unmarried woman, whose lover refused to marry her after she got pregnant – so was she waiting for six months for him to change his mind? And was now going to whoosh this baby out of her like so much unwanted trash? And what happened to the undeniable medical fact that there is danger to the mother’s life too if she goes in for a termination post four months?

The same article quoted the court as having said that termination was allowed up to 20-weeks, which translates to five months, which translates to cruelty, in my book! Well yes, I’m getting highly emotionally charged here – someone needs to! The unmarried woman, in her petition to the court, submitted that having the baby would expose her to “mental trauma”. Are people blind, deaf and dumb to the excruciating pain a fetus will be put through? I don’t know what hope lies ahead for us as a collective human race, when murder of those helpless and unable to speak or do anything for themselves, innocent, unborn babies, amounts to nothing and is condoned by what passes for “society”!

And then sometimes I’ll come across a random act of kindness, which warms my heart, which tells me there are still some good, humane people out there and that wickedness will not flourish so long as such people walk the earth. Hopefully the mean crazies will remain as flotsam washed up by the shore, to be ignored and trashed. All we can do is continue spreading the goodness, speak up against injustice and evil and not stare into the abyss long enough to have it stare back into us.

Also by the same author: https://thenewsporter.com/hatred-is-insidious-we-must-nip-it-in-the-bud-by-supporting-each-other-take-a-stand-now/

(Main Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay has been used for illustrative purposes only)

Punam Bakshi Mohandas is a journalist and writer with 25-years of work experience across India, Dubai and Thailand. A nomad at heart, having travelled over 43-countries at last count, Punam is also a film critic. She was a weekly columnist for the Hindustan Times (New Delhi edition), Delhi Midday, The Financial Express, The Statesman and the Times of India (Kolkata edition). She is also the author of the book, ‘Fallen Angels’. The views expressed here in this column are her own and The News Porter bears no responsibility for the same.