Photo courtesy of www.cutebabypictures.org
From
WIRE REPORTS
The
abortion ratio in Sai Gon was double the national average with 66 cases per 100
live births last year, a news website
quoted an official at a conference as saying.
Statistics
from public hospitals showed that one in every two live births is terminated by
the parents, To Kim Hoa, chief of the Sai Gon Population Agency, told the
conference on population and health held on Wednesday.
According
to Hoa, the main reasons for abortions in Viet Nam were unexpected pregnancies
due to poor use of contraception, adding that young married couples were also
unfamiliar with pre-marital health check-ups.
Meanwhile,
Dr. Nguyen Ngoc Thong, director of Sai Gon Center for Reproductive Health Care,
said abortion was an expected consequence of a city growing more crowded every
day.
“The
demand for sex does not change, but nowadays no one wants to have children, so
it is unavoidable that people have abortions after getting pregnant
unexpectedly,” he said.
However,
the expert also noted that as compared to previous years when abortion
outnumbered live births, the latest figure had showed a decrease in abortions.
The
work of Pham Thi Cuong
Elsewhere,
Nam Dinh Province does not keep official statistics on abortions or the number of
babies abandoned there, but over the past decade, an elderly woman has found and
buried more than 4,000 unwanted babies.
Pham
Thi Cuong, 74, whose hair is silver and who has trouble breathing, pedals each day
on her bicycle searching for disregarded embryos from abortion procedures, and in
some cases, the little bodies of babies who had been born and abandoned.
Many
of them are put into plastic bags and thrown onto the sidewalk where they become
prey for insects and other animals, making it difficult to identify them, she told
a news website.
Cuong
cleans them and holds them to make them feel warm. Then she covers them in cloth
and places them in small jars, reciting prayers before giving them burials at a
local public cemetery.
The
woman said that after 10 years, she is still haunted by the first experience
that made her decide to make the grim task a regular part of her life.
“Its
body was black and blue and there were ants all over it. Such a painful sight,”
she told the wire service.
Cuong
said she was going to the market to sell some vegetables and saw a black plastic
bag on the sidewalk surrounded by flies and bugs, the sight of which made her nauseous.
“There
was something moving inside and I just figured a family had thrown out their dead
animals, so I just kept going. But then I didn’t feel right and felt the urge to
go back.
“I
was startled to find a newborn infant breathing with difficulty when I unfolded
the bag.”
Cuong
took the baby around the neighborhood in search of a new mother capable of feeding
it with breast milk, but the baby died before she managed to find one.
After
shedding many tears and contemplating the experience for several days, Cuong decided
there must be other babies cast out under similar circumstances who also needed
proper burials, “so that their souls may find peace,” she explained.
Every
day, she leaves her vegetables at the market to a neighboring vendor and travels
around Nghia Hung District, focusing on the plastic bags she sees on the street.
When
she finds a baby, she gives it a proper burial before returning to her vegetables
at the market.
Cuong
said she has had to ignore a lot of criticism that she should forget about these
unwanted babies and concentrate on dealing with her own poverty.
But
she has been lauded as well, with many people having come to consider her an archangel
of abandoned newborns and aborted fetuses. They now inform her every time they see
such babies.
