This letter was sent to The Straits Times Forum on 8 March but was not published.
If my teenage sister had not seen the
sonogram of her 9 weeks old daughter or heard the sound of her beating heart in
the abortion clinic, I would not have an adorable 15 months old niece now
(“Number of abortions down by about half in nearly a decade"; 8 March).
I could have lost my sister too as she
entertained thoughts of suicide when the father of their child kept
pressurizing her to go for an abortion.
My family members are not for abortion
but our laws that allow abortion up to six months of pregnancy, with no minimum
age and no need for parental consent, made abortion seem like an easy option.
During this period up till the abortion
deadline, people continued to suggest that abortion was the “quick solution” to
my sister’s unsupported pregnancy. One of her friends even said she was cruel
to bring the child to term, knowing she would not have a father, as her
boyfriend had left her following the decision to keep the baby.
I was also asked by her medical social
worker on why I was against abortion and assumed to be so because of my
religion. Science and technology informed me that this is a child in a mother’s
womb, the supposedly safest place for the preborn.
With help from some non-profit
organizations like Safe Place and a Christian community, my sister was
empowered to be the best mother to my niece.
My sister may have
been, by conventional standards, too young to “be a mother”, but no one
automatically knows how to be a parent, regardless of age. She became a mother
the moment my niece was conceived – and she would forever be a mother who lost
a child if she had chosen abortion.
Giving his round-up of this year’s Budget
debate in Parliament, Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat said that the
Government has a duty to future Singaporeans who are
not yet born and are unable to make their voices heard today.
How can the voices of future Singaporeans
be heard if there are so many obstacles to be born?
