For many years, she has felt a deep sense of guilt for aborting a baby she had conceived with a man she barely remembers. The year it happened, she had just come back from Britain, where she was going to college, for a vacation and met the guy in question occasionally.
At the time, she was unprepared to raise a child and so made the decision to have an abortion -- and after three surgical procedures, her pregnancy was terminated.
But soon she began to feel that her unborn baby was taking revenge on her, a kind of ghost tale, stories she had been told as a little girl.
PHOTO: AFP
First, her boyfriend married another woman and then she failed her college course in Britain. She felt that from the moment of the abortion, her unborn baby haunted her day and night, seeking revenge.
After returning to Taiwan, she met a con man who claimed he could communicate with spirits of the deceased. Knowing about her past, he told her that she was possessed by the spirit of the aborted baby and that she could only be saved if she followed his orders unquestioningly.
She believed him and did everything he ordered her to do -- earning money for him through prostitution and then getting a loan from a bank with forged documents. She ended up being charged with forgery and faced a jail sentence.
FILE PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMESN
During the trial, her testimony amazed the judges presiding over her case, who found it inconceivable that this educated woman from a well-off family would have believed in such superstition.
She was eventually acquitted, but the sense of guilt arising from the abortion so long ago still haunts her to this day.
Abortion and morality
In Taiwan, the abortion issue is rarely seen as a religious one, and neither does it take on political overtones. The country legalized abortion in 1984 and has recently become the first Asian country to approve sales of the controversial abortion pill mifepristone, known as RU-486.
"But it's common here in this society to moralize the abortion issue and to warn women of the guilt associated with the act, using superstitions about the baby's spirit," said Chang Chueh (張玨), head of the women's research center at National Taiwan University.
"The underlying reason why a woman may need to have an abortion is often overlooked and instead our women have been taught to feel guilty for killing their unborn babies," she added. "Society in general is built on patriarchal values, where women's reproductive capabilities are controlled by men."
"Legally, it seems women here are allowed to have their own say on reproductive choices. But the fact is the legalization [of abortion] in 1984 was made possible not to recognize women's reproductive self-determination but to mesh with the state policy on population control," said the professor of public health, who has long advocated abortion rights for women.
"Even until recently, when the authorities approved the sale of RU-486, all we've seen is just a struggle of interests between the pill manufacturers and the ob-gyns," she said.
"While the former are calculating what profit they could get from the new market, the latter is counting how much they would lose when the pill replaces traditional surgical abortions. And the women, though it is they who will be the subject of the medical procedure, are left out of the process of policymaking," Chang said.
Competing interests
Just as there are no statistics on the number of rape victims in Taiwan, there are no established figures on the number of abortions. While there has been a bold estimate that over 400,000 pregnancies are terminated each year in this country, a more conservative figure is thought to be around 10,000.
Before the abortion pill become available a month ago, D&C (子宮搔刮術), a method of surgical abortion used in the first trimester of pregnancy, was the most common abortion method used by obstetricians, who charge between NT$5,000 and NT$7,000 for the procedure. However, for reasons of privacy and lower cost, many believe RU-486 will attract a large number of women looking to end pregnancies.
In the Department of Health's policy-making process, both the manufacturers of RU-486 and the obstetricians, represented by the Taiwan Association of Obstetrics and Gynecology (
While the manufacturers pursued regulations on the sale of the pill that were as liberal as possible, doctors sought to restrict the pill to prescription use only.
After observing the actions of both parties, women's groups called the process a tug-of-war between the interests of the manufacturers and the ob-gyns and slammed the health department for "ignoring" women's concerns.
Su Tsung-hsien (
"I think it's unfair to say the doctors were representing their own interests in their dealings with the health department. We're fighting, after all, for the same goal as the women's groups are. It's unethical for everyone to try to make a fortune out of such products as RU-486," Su said.
"What we've felt doubtful about was that while access to the pill is fairly restricted in other countries, the French manufacturer wanted it made easily accessible in Taiwan. As far as my colleagues and myself are concerned, it's just like another Opium War," Su said.
Privacy issues
Though Su used the term metaphorically, it was worry about abuse of the pill that drove him to draw the comparison to the Opium War.
And to great extent the fact that RU-486 -- developed in France two decades ago -- was available here even before the health department approved its sale is an indication that the pill is very appealing to women here who are looking to end pregnancies.
No more clinics; no more waiting until a pregnancy is far enough along to induce a miscarriage. Proponents of the pill predict that it may make the whole experience of abortion more private and enable women to end a pregnancy before the embryo even resembles a fetus. They also predict that it will change medicine by offering a less invasive procedure.
For more than 10 years, European women have been able to use RU-486 as a pharmacological alternative to surgical abortion during the early stages of pregnancy. Now Taiwan women, who are no less concerned than the Europeans about privacy when having an abortion, see that the drug may save them from experiencing the usually hostile and cold environment of many hospitals.
"Studies show that in Taiwan nearly 90 percent of women would prefer to go to private clinics rather than to the well-equipped hospitals when they want to end a pregnancy. The attitude of hospital staff often deters them, even though they may have faith in the skill and equipment [available at] hospitals," said Liu Chung-tung (
"For many women, the attraction of RU-486 is as simple as that it frees them from the discriminatory moral judgements demonstrated by the medical staff," Liu said.
The pill and teenagers
In fact, before official approval of its sale, RU-486 had been available in many pharmacies and clinics. For reasons of privacy and convenience, the pill has been widely used by not only adults -- but teenage girls.
"It seems to be common knowledge among teenage girls as to where to find the pill. Some of them have bought it from pharmacies and some via the Internet. It's much easier for them to have an abortion with the pill than to have a D&C, for which they must have consent of their parents," said Chi Hui-jung (紀惠容), executive-general of the Garden of Hope Foundation (勵馨基金會), which provides counseling services for teens.
With the approval of the pill, there have been allegations that it would encourage promiscuity among teenagers and therefore increase the number of abortions.
"We're worried misuse of the pill could endanger girls' health, but that's not to say we should keep the pill away from the girls," Chi said.
"I think no women, including young girls, would like to risk their lives having an abortion if they could have other choices. The reasoning that access to the pill would encourage more abortions is flawed," Chi said.
"Without RU-486, teens will still do what their parents don't want them to and some will get pregnant. The important thing is whether the parents have told their children about contraception beforehand and whether they would be ready to help them if they learned their child was pregnant," she continued.
"Instead of teaching teens that abortion is a sin, [and using] guilt to deter them from sex, it'd be more pragmatic for parents to teach their kids about contraception. And above all, men, who are equally responsible for the consequences of pregnancies, should stop thinking it's all a woman's responsibility."
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