a pregnancy test.

I sipped tea with a friend this week, and she told me that a young girl she knows—a university student in our city—has a new boyfriend and missed her period this month.  Do I think this means she’s pregnant, my friend asked?

Hmmm, could be.  She should definitely take a pregnancy test.

My friend looked dismayed: You mean go to a hospital?

No, a urine test will work just fine.

My South Asian friend had never heard of a urine test, the kind you can find at any drugstore.  She thought for awhile.

I asked if she wanted me to go buy one, and she looked relieved.  “I am single, and it would look very bad if I bought a pregnancy test.”

I hear this all the time from my South Asian friends, whether they are poor or rich: “It would look very bad if . . .”  It would look very bad to their parents, their in-laws, their husbands, their neighbors.

This phrase, “It would look very bad,” governs a whole lot of life for women in this part of the world.  And rightly so.  One wrong decision, one misplaced confidence, could ruin them forever.

Case in point.

I say to my friend: “If this student is pregnant, please, please tell her not to get an abortion.  I know so many people who would be happy to take the baby.”

My friend is horrified: “Not get an abortion!?  Do you realize what will happen to her if anyone finds out she is pregnant!?”

And my heart is grieved.  I know what I think about abortion.

But this is a girl’s real life.  And I’m not so naïve that I can’t see the consequences play out before our eyes.  It doesn’t matter if she gives the baby up for adoption.

My friend hesitates, then goes on: “Do you think abortion is wrong?”

My heart is so heavy as I sit there and tell her just what I think: that God is the one who creates a life, that he wants his creation to live.

And she tells me that she herself had an abortion, several years back.  She was married, she had every right in this society to get pregnant and bear a child.  But her husband was out of work.  They were struggling just to buy food to eat.  And a job offer came for her.  A good job, a job that would provide for her and her husband.  So she had to choose: do I want a baby, or do I want to pay the rent?

We look at each other, and all I feel is sadness.  Sadness that my friend—who absolutely loves children, who glows whenever they are around her—had to make this choice, which wasn’t really a choice at all.

Sadness that a college student is huddled up in her room right now, terrified about her future.  Not just she-may-have-to-quit-school terrified, but life-or-death terrified.

Sadness that abortions are attempted by women in desperation, alone in their homes—or with their mothers standing by, keeping watch at the windows, guardians of their dark secrets.  Abortions are botched and tried again, and again.  Babies are routinely dumped in garbage cans, left to die all alone in the filth.

And women’s bodies bleed and their hearts bleed even more.

Sadness because I know many people—many South Asians—who would gladly adopt one of their country’s millions of unwanted babies, but, in this culture, the wall between a college student’s positive pregnancy test and a baby in their arms, is insurmountable.

I went to buy the pregnancy test yesterday.  The pharmacist smiled brightly at me and said, “Congratulations if it’s positive!”

I was completely taken aback, and further reminded of the truth: everyone’s watching.  For me, a foreign woman, a pregnancy is something to be celebrated.  But my single or single-again South Asian sisters would be treated by the same pharmacist with suspicion.

My friend added another layer to this impossible scenario: If you are a single woman, going to the hospital for a pregnancy test, everyone you meet—from the janitor to the nurses to the doctor—will threaten to tell your relatives if you don’t give them money.

And so, even if a woman, by some stretch, decides to go through with the pregnancy, to give her baby up for adoption, she won’t dare to go for prenatal check-ups.

Women in this country are not bad.  They are not baby-killers.  They are inextricably woven into the fabric of a society which, by its very nature, shreds their dignity, their ability to choose their own future.  A society which makes them nothing more than someone’s daughter, someone’s wife, someone’s mother, someone’s source of income, someone’s honor or someone’s shame.

It is a hard thing to bear.