BAJURA, JANUARY 21
Twenty-six-year-old Kali Thapa of Badimalika Municipality, Bajura, has been battling for life because of unsafe abortion. Having taken medicine for abortion from a medical shop in the district headquarters, Martadi, she has been struggling for life in Seti Zonal Hospital for want of blood.
Having suffered from excessive bleeding after taking the abortion-inducing drug, her kin had taken Kali to the district hospital. According to the hospital's information officer Nriparaj Giri, after it was found that she was suffering from excessive bleeding and her haemoglobin level was low, she was transferred to Bayalpata Hospital, Achham.
From Bayalpata Hospital, she was further referred to Dhangadi after giving her a pint of blood. Her blood group is said to be O negative.
"She is being treated at Seti Hospital, but we are finding it hard to get the blood that she needs, that is O negative," said Kali's husband Ram Bahadur, also lamenting lack of money to treat his wife. "Our villagers collected some money and somehow sent us to this hospital. As I don't have money to even buy a mask, I don't know how I'm going to treat my wife," he said.
The Thapa couple has five daughters, and she was pregnant for the sixth time. After learning that it was a female foetus in her womb, she had decided to abort the foetus, for which she had reached Martadi seeking to buy a drug for the same.
Meanwhile, many women in Bajura and elsewhere in the country risk their lives as they, in most cases hoping to have a son, opt to take some unsafe abortion drug once they get to identify the gender of the foetus. Bisna Rokaya of Khaptad Chhededaha Rural Municipality opted for drug-induced abortion twice upon learning that she had a female foetus. Though the abortion went normal the first time, she nearly lost her life the second time. Many women share their plight of having to opt for abortion ultimately after learning that they were not bearing a son due to the pressure from family and society to bear a son for some cultural and religious reasons.
A version of this article appears in the print on January 22, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
