Monday, December 7, 2009

Another Ridiculous TT article

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1091207/jsp/atleisure/story_11831536.jsp

As a friend pointed out, this has put feminism back by a hundred years. She's about right. Clinical trials of the pill began around late 1950s (wikipedia tells me). So not a hundred years that way but the right to and control over one's choice of reproduction is one of the most basic and fundamental of rights and without it women will be left nowhere. The debate about making the Emergency Contraceptive Pill a prescription drug is the latest step in this patriarchal world order feeling its need to exert control over women's freedom of choice and their independence. Yes yes hormonal prescription drugs do cause damage, I admit. But so do painkillers. And there are thousands of stupid people out there fucking their systems over and over again by doing Spasmo and Decolic: drugs to relieve menstrual cramps. Have these drugs been made prescription drugs? Nobody cares, you see, whether women fuck their systems from taking too much painkillers. But oh, we don't want the ovaries and the uterus outta order. We need a billion more unwanted children in this overpopulated country. We want women to go through humiliation and face the social stigma of having to go to a physician for an ECP or an abortion. Maybe force them to have a few hundred more illicit abortion thereby killing or maiming themselves. This TT article, as the said friend who directed me to it pointed out, does not say anything about women facing patronising gynaes who see themselves as moral instructors instead of doctors. The article recommends itself as a look at 'the debate' surround the issue of making ECPs a prescription drug. But how is the debate reflected where nearly everyone who's quoted says how horribly teenage girls are misusing it?
If you're talking about the adverts, yes, since when have adverts been morally responsible? Why should the ECP be made a prescription drug because the advert doesn't talk about the side effects? Do the adverts of fairness creams and bleach talk about side effects? And is anyone stupid enough to assume that fairness products do not have side effects? Is this blatant promotion of fairness products not even more reprehensible in a country where dowry deaths and violence against women are on the rise? At least ECPs have leaflets talking about side effects inside. I don't think Fair and Lovely does.
And what kind of critique is this:

“I find the advertisements for these pills completely misleading,” says 28-year-old Neha Singh, who had a bad scare when she used an emergency contraceptive recently. “I hadn’t read the fine print, so when I started suffering from lethargy, breast tenderness and my periods were delayed — all typical signs of a pregnancy — I didn’t realise that they were side effects. In fact, I thought that the pill had failed. The ads should at least mention the possible side effects and educate consumers about the correct use of the morning after pill.”

I mean there are morons everywhere. But because some idiot doesn't read the leaflet and panics, it somehow means ECPs should be made prescription drugs? Brilliant journalism I must say!

3 comments:

Reeti said...

http://the-magic-ink-stand.blogspot.com/2009/12/how-my-morning-began-today.html

Prawin said...

India has the choice to continue being a nation of men with women slaves, or a nation of people, where gender, origin, caste, color of skin are debated out of civilized life. You are right about the reaction to ECP being one of insecurity of the men, the same men who promote impunity for rape, who ban jeans for women as if the perversity to rape doesn't originate in the minds and loins of the men, but in how women choose to dress.

It is the deep hypocrisy of a nation of men who look back at their long history and realize that they have always been emasculated by other men, invaders, colonizers. They can't get rid of that rage at impotency anywhere else, so they target women who dare to make independent choices.

Madhura said...

Welcome to my blurts Prawin!