CAN RELIGION DECIDE HOW MANY KIDS A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE?

(Is the love for motherhood controlled by religious diktat?)

Every year Singh’s cows produced a bevy of calves, his goats were even more fertile with kids hopping and jumping out in abundance. He was a contended farmer, it meant more cows, more goats and more milk to be sold. And the wave of fertility didn’t remain confined to his farm only. Singh ensured to impregnate his wife Lajo almost every alternate year. He needed a houseful of sons to look after his farms. Lajo would produce son after son with a few daughters interspersed between or at times bloody and painful miscarriages. The health worker had once cautioned repeated pregnancies led to anaemia. Lajo indeed looked so pale. But Singh was unperturbed. So what? She can have iron tablets. After the birth of the fifth child Lajo even tried to undergo a ligation without telling her husband. But she was threatened she would be thrown out of the household if she did so, just like she was forbidden from using any contraception as her husband reminded her that would be against the religious texts. It would mean committing a great sin.

But how can religion be misinterpreted or misrepresented to dictate a woman’s child bearing needs. Isn’t forcing a woman’s body to repeated pregnancies against her wish, some of which can be life threatening and even lead to death, a sin? And how can politicians and religious leaders give diktats as to how many kids a woman should produce? For Singh, his wife Lajo was equivalent to his cows and goats, she was a producer. He never felt the pain that the woman went through delivery, he never realised how her body was drained off the vitamins and nutrition, how he was putting Lajo's life at risk every time Singh took pride in being the father again.

And such men are unfortunately influenced and encouraged to commit such sins by politicians and religious leaders. Sakshi Maharaj (a BJP Parliamentarian from Uttar Pradesh) recently goes on to say every Hindu woman must produce at least four kids. He even lays down the family planning, urging Hindu families to give one child to the army, one to religious leaders and to keep the other two for themselves. It’s almost like distributing finished products from a factory.  

If indeed Sakshi Maharaj was a true Hindu and would have read his religious scriptures properly he would have known that the oldest religion of the world was far more advanced and modern that he is today. The Upanishads clearly advocate birth control and even goes on to describe how one can practice contraception by using different sexual positions. Respected scholars like Gandhi advocated abstinence as a form of birth control, Radhakrishnan and Tagore encouraged use of artificial contraceptive means. The Vedantas and Buddhist texts state although fertility is important for conceiving more children, none should be forced to have more kids as that violates the fundamental concept of Ahimsa, an integral teaching of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism alike.

Lajo had an urban match in Rubina, a school teacher married to an orthodox Muslim business family. Every time Rubina lay in the labour room writhing in pain with the nurses urging her to keep her breathing going and try and push hard, assuring her at times the doctors are on their way, or the baby would soon be delivered, some even scolding her for shouting and crying, she just prayed this would be her last. The psychological stress of again being a mother was so high, that Rubina had started to hate the concept of motherhood though she had loved to be one on the first two occasions. She had to give up her job, she had to go on producing at the behest of his father-in-law, a Muslim cleric who said if she didn’t she was violating the tenets of Quran.

But the truth is, Islamic medicine has known about birth control for centuries. Muslim writers like Al Razi (924AD) and Avicenna (980AD) refer to different methods of contraception. Even eight of the nine classic schools of Islam permit it. But more conservative Islam leaders have openly campaigned against the use of condoms or any birth control methods thus making population planning ineffective in many countries. It went to such monstrous proportions that in 2005 around 40 Islamic scholars from 20 countries across the globe urged fresh efforts to push family planning and make the reproductive growth better and healthy. There are a number of Hadith that indicate that the Prophet knew of birth control and approved it in appropriate circumstances. Hadith are said to describe and approve of the withdrawal method during coitus. Egyptian scholars have concluded that any method that has the same purpose of preventing conception is acceptable so long as it does not have a permanent effect. However contraception like sterilisation leading to a complete child free marriage is not acceptable in Islam.

The question of birth control is related to the basic view about sex. If someone relates sex to the original sin and equate it with evil and allow sexual intercourse only for the purpose of procreation then obviously they will be totally opposed to birth control. Allowing birth control would mean sex for pleasure. Like, the Roman Catholic Church is against birth control and prohibits contraceptives stating it goes against the philosophy of marriage.

But does Vatican have the courage to forbid intercourse with a pregnant wife or ban marriage of infertile men and women? They should have banned these as they too cannot produce pregnancy. Some churches had even advocated that a husband’s conjugal rights should be such that his wife should be sexually available, responsive and cooperative and cannot force the husband to use a condom.

Impregnating a woman thus had another intention. Subjugation. Just because females have been chosen by creation to bear, just like the flowering tree that bears fruits, child-bearing was used in many societies as a means to keep women within the confines of the house. The more she produced and at quicker intervals, the less would be her chance to try her hands out at other fields of life. Womanhood became directly proportional to a glorified motherhood, the sole purpose of a woman’s existence.

But it seems there are deep rooted political reasons as well. At a time the Russian government, the government of Lebanon and also the Israelis who ruled over Palestine, tried to stop Muslims from having children for they were afraid that they will gain majority by producing more children and hence will have a say in the government by issuing fatwas. In over populous countries like India where the quality of population declines due to uncontrolled births in families that cannot provide their children with basic needs, matching up religious sentiments with birth control can have dangerous consequences indeed.

And as a dear friend had once said its personal choice whether we go for a child-free marriage or not. Similarly it should be personal choice as to how many children a couple desires and undoubtedly the choice should be left to a woman as she is the one who goes through the tedious physical and psychological hardships of bringing a new life to this world. In the name of God so please stop using women as baby producing machines.