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Heads bowed, the young couple intoned their prayers at a pagoda in Ho Chi Minh City.
She burst into tears and soon after, he was crying as well.
They were crying for the souls of the dead, not of their parents, relatives or friends, but for fetuses they had aborted.
The young couple, who had had two abortions, were not alone in their grief, guilt and atonement.
Several
thousand couples and individuals gathered at the Tu Quang Pagoda in
Binh Chanh District for the three-day grand requiem last week, and the
tears flowed copiously.
“I was not expecting it (the grand requiem) would attract that many people,” the pagoda’s Head Monk Thich Giac Thien told Thanh Nien Weekly.
“The
chanting ceremony was originally organized on the request of a few
people who wanted to express remorse for their aborted fetuses,” he
said.
But the news spread and people flocked in droves to the three-day event which ended last Saturday.
Thousands of couples came to chant in atonement every day. At least 4,000 people came on the last day.
All
the attendants were required to declare their names and their abortion
cases in a fact sheet given by the pagoda, Monk Thien said. They had to
tell the truth about the number of abortions they’d had so that the
souls of the fetuses could rest in peace, he added.
Staggering numbers
One woman in her sixties from the northern port city of Hai Phong reported she’d had 20 abortions, topping the list.
The majority of women had aborted between four to 10 times, Nun Thanh Lai told Thanh Nien Weekly.
The average age of women attending the atonement ceremony ranged between 30 and 45, but there were many younger ones as well.
A 23-year-old woman from the Mekong Delta province of Tra Vinh, identified only as N.T.N.N, had already had four abortions.
Also
23, P.T.M.T could not even remember how many times she’d gone through
the process. “Many times” was what she wrote in the fact sheet.
But T. could name her partner on the fact sheet. H.K.D from HCMC’s District 4, meanwhile, wrote “anonymous.”
Abortion
is legal in Vietnam and both public and private clinics are allowed to
perform the practice. The country was ranked as having the world's
highest abortion rate in a 1999 report by the US-based Guttmacher
Institute.
‘I killed my baby’
For 29-year-old P.T.T.N in HCMC, who had three abortions, the first was a traumatic experience.
Getting
married and pregnant when she was 22, N. said had no choice but to
abort the fetus since she was still studying in college then.
“I was too scared and the [first] abortion haunted me a lot,” N. told Thanh Nien Weekly. “I had a feeling that I had killed my baby and that would make me infertile for the rest of my life.”
N. now has one child.
T.T.N.T, 33, also in HCMC, had her first abortion 10 years ago when she was already married.
“That was my last resort. We were too poor at that time to give birth to the baby,” T. said.
Since then, T. has aborted a total of six times. She has two children.
But
many other women who came to grand requiem were not as fortunate as N.
or T. They have been suffering the consequences of unsafe abortions –
serious injuries, infertility, or permanent or temporary disabilities.
Growing problem
There
are no reliable statistics for abortions performed by both public and
private health sectors in Vietnam, said Nguyen Bich Hang, the Vietnam
office head of Marie Stopes International, a UK-based non-governmental
organization providing sexual and reproductive healthcare services.
“The
government’s annual statistics on abortion cases tend to reflect those
performed at the public health sector only, leaving those provided by a
majority of 31,000 private clinics in Vietnam unknown and not
reported,” Hang said.
Monk
Thien said that major hospitals in HCMC were also aware of the
ceremony. “They told me that abortion cases have continued to increase
over the past years.”
Tu Du and Hung Vuong hospitals, the two largest maternity facilities in the city, confirmed what Monk Thien said.
During
the first nine months of this year, Hung Vuong Hospital recorded around
18,600 cases. “A majority of women undergoing abortion were aged
between 20 to 24,” said Tran Son Thach, the hospital director.
Tu Du Hospital said nearly 21,000 abortions had been performed as of September.
“Girls
aged under 19 account for 10 percent, from just 5 to 7 percent during
the past years,” said Dr. Duong Phuong Mai, head of the hospital’s
family planning department.
Hang
from Marie Stopes International Vietnam blamed the high rates of
abortion in Vietnam on poor counseling on the potential health
consequences of unwanted pregnancies and unwanted birth and the wide
and easy availability of abortion services
“The
lack of proper follow-up and lack of skill and motivation among the
majority of family planning service providers often discourage women,
especially young ones, from asking for information and coming back for
repeated use of contraceptives.”
The role of the mass media also leaves considerable room for improvement, Hang said.
When
providing information on sensitive issues like safe sex and
contraceptive use, the stress should be on providing accurate facts.
Most of educational activities are perceived as propaganda rather than
“factual and objective,” Hang said.
Why and why not?
The pagoda’s fact sheet did not require the attendees to say why they’d chosen to have the abortions.
But in conversations with Thanh Nien Weekly, many women and couples were hesitant about going into why they’d had so many abortions.
Some
said they were too young, others that they were still studying. Others
were not married, or their boyfriends had dumped them on learning they
were pregnant. Some were rape victims.
Poverty
was cited by many women as a reason. Female employees from rural areas
living and working away from their families at industrial zones became
pregnant after cohabiting with fellow workers but were too poor to keep
the baby.
Some
believed they were engaging in “safe sex” without using contraceptives
of any sort, for instance by having the male partner “ejaculate
outside.”
No
one at the event mentioned that they’d decided to have an abortion
based on the sex of the fetus, but many studies and reports have
documented that the preference for a son has motivated the abortion of
female fetuses.
Reported by An Dien (With additional reporting by Thanh Tung)
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