Circles Within Circles

Bakhita was young when we first encountered her, maybe ten years of age.  Trapped in a vicious world of labour and slavery, her release was eventually secured by a group of dedicated Canadians who succeeded in returning her to her historic home through the Sudanese equivalent of the Underground Railroad.  Sudan was riddled with slavery at the time, but Bakhita was one of the lucky ones to find her freedom.Her family had long since perished in the civil war, but her village looked out for her.  With no schooling available, she set herself to assisting the older women in search of water and food.  By the time she was sixteen, she matured into a remarkably attractive girl and it wasn’t too long until one of the officers in the southern Sudanese army sought to marry her.  She was delighted with the prospect and the belief that she would now be looked after.Things didn’t turn out as planned. Her husband came home only occasionally and then only for brief periods.  Soon after he went back to the war after one of these visits she discovered she was pregnant.  Not long after her first birth, she became pregnant again.  Bakhita had no family planning options open to her.  Complications ensued during her third trimester and by the time she was in labour, she had developed fistula between her bladder and the birth canal. The baby's head was wedged against the pubic bone, cutting off the blood supply.  As her condition worsened, it became obvious that unless something could be done to abort the fetus she would perish.  Crude procedures and tools were used in this regard – all to no effect.Bakhita died, as did the little life inside her, in the mud hut that her parents had occupied before they had died.  After all she had endured, she ended up buried at the outskirts of the village for want of a simple procedure.  Her husband never returned and her one living offspring still survives, cared for by the very women who assisted Bakhita in her death.This is what makes all the hoopla circling around CIDA’s decision not to fund groups that undertake abortion procedures so maddening.  Maintaining a pro-life decision in Africa often results in the death of expectant mothers.  I have listened to the debates and realize that both sides have their legitimate arguments.  The problem is that Bakhita died because we argued so vociferously that we eventually forgot her.  She perished because we live in a political world in Canada that plays more to our party base and retail politics than it does to a woman dying in her family home after great personal suffering and loss.There is something remarkably unheroic about this.  A government suddenly decides after 25 years of international practice that it won’t fund a group that could have helped Bakhita.  Yet at the same time, it doesn’t possess the courage to live its morality at home in Canada because to do so could result in an election loss.  All the fervent pro-lifers in the governing party practice their ethics on a poor woman far away in Africa, yet refuse to stake such a claim at home because in the end it never is about Bakhita but about power. Their pro-life stance ultimately led to death.Circles within circles - that’s what we have.  A labrynthian maze of morality that is neither moral nor compassionate.  Ethical morality becomes attractive as an export product, while at the same time the purveyors of principle are too afraid to put it to a vote at home.  Bakhita’s grave stands as a sad testament to those who fear to lose power, while delighting in their missionary zeal.  Bakhita deserved better and I’ll miss her.