Consider this story:
Neeli, a victim of drug abuse, visits Manali with her gang of friends. Raghav, friend of hers, takes her out one evening. The two of them have a lovely time together, sitting under a high pine tree, overlooking the town below.
The lights mellow down and they slowly see little jewels beginning to glitter in the town below. The sky, not to be outdone, decides to display its splendid collection of diamonds as well.
It was a beautiful night. Neeli and Raghav decided to push their friendship into yet unchartered realms. They made love to each other under the starlit skies and fell asleep. They woke up to another beautiful day.
Each day brought the couple new joys and sorrows. They were into the sixth month of their relationship when Neeli decided that she wanted to have a baby. She tried telling Raghav about it but he advised her against it. So she decided to take the matter into her hands. In a couple of months time, she was pregnant. Raghav was utterly disappointed at this, for more reasons than one. He tried convincing her, in many ways, to get her baby aborted. She told him that she wouldn't and that she wouldn't need his support in bringing up the baby if he didn't want to.
The baby was born. She was in the paediatric ICU for a week. She was having withdrawal fits, a symptom common in newborn children of drug abuse victims. The child, out of the mother's womb, finds itself unable to survive without drugs that were consumed by the mother during pregnancy. It experiences withdrawal symptoms commonly faced by drug abuse victims trying to quit their habit.
The baby survived the fits and grew older. Neeli, Raghav, and all of their friends enrolled themselves in rehabilitation centers. Raghav successfully got out of his habit and is helping Neeli slowly achieve her targets at the rehab.
-x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x-
PS: This is fiction. It is terribly sad. But this is not the worst story that could be told. Worse, and yet more believable things could have happened. Men dumping their girlfriends as soon as they find out about their pregnancy. Unsafe sex. AIDS.
-x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x-
I am not here to make judgements on victims of drug abuse or about whether women have the right to have babies in spite of their partners' insistence against it.
I am just bewildered by the helplessness of the situation. My question is the following.
Do drug abuse victims not have the right to desire to have babies of their own? If they aren't able to quit the habit, is it a sin to bring a baby into the world?
How can god have imagined things so complicated? Or is it that he just couldn't have imagined that things could get so complicated? He gives women the desire to procreate. He still allows them to get into the habit of taking drugs? Free will? You say free will? How much free will does anyone have? Let alone a victim of drug abuse! What about the child? The baby is addicted too, and is probably predisposed to drug addiction in his/her adulthood. Please stop talking about free will! When things like this happen, I just cannot believe in 'free will'. But then again, I can't also believe that someone, or some force, is perverted enough to allow things like this to happen. Is this all random then?? If so, why the hell am I here, a part of this??
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Sunday, July 6, 2008
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1 comment:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/health/03letters-ADDICTIONAND_LETTERS.html
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