Withdraw Rajasthan anti-abortion video: Activists tell JP Nadda

JAIPUR: Over 100 citizens, many of them doctors and public health professionals from across the country, have appealed to Union health minister JP Nadda to withdraw two videos titled ‘Daughters are precious’ and ‘Community engagement for saving daughters in Rajasthan’.
The two animation videos, one of which bears the logo of Rajasthan National Health Mission (NHM), are available online.NHM’s ‘Daughter are precious’ was uploaded in Jaunuary this year and has been credited to the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) cell of the National Health Mission, Rajasthan. The video ‘Community engagement for saving daughters in Rajasthan’ was uploaded by an individual in February.
The petitioners say the anti-abortion content demonizes girls and women seeking an abortion, making it appear like they are murderers of babies.“The videos follow the growth of the fetus over several weeks, with the text referring to the fetus as ‘baby’ and stating developmental milestones – for example, the ‘baby has fingerprints’, the ‘baby can feel tickling’, ‘the baby can feel pain’, etc. The video also provides voice to the fetus who ‘speaks’ to the mother. This is followed by – ‘How are babies murdered by their own mothers, there are four ways, all are cruel and inhuman’.
The activists state that the video offers a detailed graphic description of the four procedures of abortion -- vacuum suction method, the ‘cutting up method’ (dilation and curettage), surgical method and the fourth “salt method”.
The petition states that the videos are all anti-abortion, and describe the procedure as “killing” or “murder”, and the fetus is repeatedly called “baby”. “This video is regressive, and stigmatizes abortion; girls or women accessing the medical procedure are painted as murderers of babies. Thus, these messages create further barriers to access to comprehensive, safe abortion care and inevitably result in the loss of women’s health and lives.
The animation videos are undoubtedly violative of the human rights of women, their bodily autonomy, their rights to make decisions about their bodies and pregnancies,” the health activists write, adding that the videos overlook the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act (MTPA), which provides legal sanction to terminate a pregnancy, albeit in a very limited manner and with several conditions. State health mission director Naveen Jain could not be reached for comments on the videos on Sunday. When contacted, state health minister Kalicharan Saraf said that he was not quite aware about the video but would get the state health mission authorities to look into it. “If the video is found to be objectionable, it will be removed,’’ he said.