If ever you condescend to visit us, our address is as follows: 20 000, Abortion Street, Real World City, Mauritius.

For ease of navigation, here are some directions: when you land on our planet, please follow the road until you get to a corner shop called Bankruptcy. There, you will see groups of men drinking local rhum on credit and ?getting in the mood?. Turn right from there and you will see Misery Street. The small shacks there with plastic sheets on the windows are actually homes sheltering large families. The women inside are exhausted. After a whole day?s work, they are trying desperately to look after the children and cook the meager evening meal while dreading the return of the men from Bankruptcy Shop. The men will definitely be ?in the mood? when they get back, the women completely out of it. Besides, the women know it is the ?wrong date? but the men will not hear their pleading.

?The arguments for pro-choice are simple and even unoriginal. Why are they then so misunderstood??

The house at the end of the street shelters nine souls. The eldest child is 13 and is quite bright. He is desperately trying to do his homework to be able to take his family out of poverty one day, but he cannot concentrate. The orchestra offered by the smaller Beethovens is deafening and dinner is not ready yet. When it is, it will not be enough and they will all go to bed hungry. No, hunger on our planet means not eating what you want. It means not eating enough of anything.

To your left is Shame Street. The hushed voices you hear are badmouthing the little pregnant girl who had been raped by both her father and her brother. How will she ever show her face when the little Antigone is born?

At this point, turn right into Gloating Street. Here, the women are ?congratulating? the youngest grandmother in the world: her ten-year old daughter has just given birth to a child. Why is the grandmother turning red instead of smiling? The girl is looking through the window at the girls her age still playing with Barbie; a childhood she will never live. She has already discovered the dark side of Ken, a rapist, and now she has a constant reminder of his objectionable act. You may have seen him walking away. No, the police are not arresting him. They are too busy arresting the women who dare reclaim the sovereignty of their bodies.

Tragedy Street starts as soon as you turn left. The howling you hear expresses the agony of a family mourning the loss of their three children and the severe injuries to the other two. They had been left alone in a room lit by one candle while the father went away drinking. The father has allegedly been heard saying that he had intended to burn the five children to death because he could not feed them.

I forgot to tell you: while you are driving past, please make sure that your windows are shut and your air-con is on to keep out the stench of poverty, the murk of stigma and shame and the dust of helplessness. You are not used to being so close.

I hope the reality of this world does not shock you too much. I know none of these hideous things exists on your planet. I have occasionally visited your planet in my dreams, and I have seen postcards of it. Beautiful, really. Terrific beaches and gorgeous white sand. A lot of sand. Enough for everyone to bury their heads in all year round. How blissful! And all these happy Beethovens and their fulfilled mothers! What a perfect world!

In the real world, let?s get the debate focused: the Abortion Debate is not about introducing a new phenomenon. It is about regulating an industry which is thriving on poverty and a dysfunctional system. There are, according to the MFPA, 20 000 abortions in this country every year (quoted in l?Express Editorial). This is a fact, not an opinion. Some of these abortions are carried out in the most unhygienic conditions by charlatans and they sometimes result in very serious health problems, even death. The public health service has to pick up the pieces. The preaching of people from another era has not been able to stop this. Neither have the archaic laws.

The arguments for pro-choice are simple and even unoriginal. Why are they then so misunderstood? No pro-choice advocate is saying that abortion should be a method of birth control or that it is a trivial and banal action. No pro-choice advocate believes in promiscuity or irresponsible sex. No pro-choice advocate believes that all unwanted pregnancies should be terminated. In fact, Pro-choice would like to see more lives realistically saved. None (or almost none) would argue for the legality of abortion after the 20th week. Until that cut-off date, there is no major central nervous activity, a condition universally regarded as a state of death in adults. An adult human being in such a state cannot be "killed," just unplugged.

Yes, abortion does put an end to potential life but so do all other methods of contraception, albeit at an earlier stage. And, since we are dealing with stages, there has to be a cut-off date, otherwise we are all guilty of having killed many Beethovens in our life time; except perhaps for those of us who practice abstinence, only have sex for procreation or have as many children as God giveth.

The Abortion Debate is not about Morality either. It is about legislation. If it were about morality, we would agree to disagree, as disputes over fundamental values are irreconcilable. Although there is a universal moral truth for everyone, there are also other quasi-moral principles derived from non-universal values. These moral principles may vary from one human being to another and, in a democracy, they cannot be expected to form the basis for legislation which governs the whole society. Some people, for example, consider eating some, or all, animals immoral. Few, I hope, would have us locked up for consuming a beef steak, a slice of ham or a rasher of bacon. We, thankfully, live in a country where la ?pensée unique? is not celebrated.

As for those who have accused me of wanting to minimize the role of religion, I would like to reiterate to them the respect I have for all the Religions of the World and the Men of God. The latter have a crucial role to play in fostering awareness and spreading their religious convictions. They can preach to their members against abortion or contraception and advocate abstinence, celibacy or any other convictions they may have. However, in a secular state, legislation goes beyond religious interests and convictions. The criminal justice system, much as some of us would like it to, cannot, should not and is ill-equipped to deal with the non-universal principles or religious beliefs some of us may hold. The Abortion Debate for me is not about whether abortion is religiously acceptable or not but rather whether the Criminal Justice System is the most effective way of dealing with it. It obviously is not.

<B>Touria PRAYAG</B>