VietNamNet Bridge – Being pregnant unexpectedly and having an abortion has become normal in Vietnam today. However, it is strange that most of people who wait in front of operation rooms are men.

At 8am, a lot of men were standing in front of the operation room in B2 building of the Hanoi Obstetrics Hospital. These people took their girlfriends and their sisters to do the terrible thing, but all of them looked phlegmatically. That motionlessness has reached an alarming level.

The operation room where abortion is conducted is in front of the sterileness consulting room. Capriciously, people come to one room in order to seek advice to have children while others go to the opposite room to give up their unexpected babies.

Does the hospital intentionally arrange these rooms this way as a warning for someone? However, people who come here for abortion seem to neglect it. The evidence is that those who were waiting for their girlfriends, their wives or their sisters calmly played games on their cell phones, read newspapers or spoke loudly on the phone.

The door of the operation room was covered by a cloth curtain. Outside people could hear the tinkling from metal tools, the groan of pregnant women and the doctors’ whisper to comfort patients. Each 15 minutes, a nurse carried a stainless steel basket out of the room. Sometimes, a woman got out of the room with pale faces and tears in their eyes.

Most of men who were sitting outside the room did not wear wedding rings. It means that the women who had abortion in that room were not their wives.

I sat down, next to a young man of around 20 who was playing games on his cell phone. The man turned to me and asked: “How many months?” “Two months. I don’t know what happens but she has been there for over 30 minutes,” I answered.

The young man said loudly: “Don’t be worried. No problem. Doctors here are very good!” “Do you come here with your wife or your girlfriend?” I asked him. He said coldly: “Not wife nor girlfriend. Just vegetable.”

I did not understand what is “vegetable” until it was explained by the young man. “Vegetable” are “booty” that men have after flirting girls for sex only. They like each other and see each other for sometime at hotels to have sex. That kind of girl is called “vegetable.”

Young men who are single and do not have girlfriends usually have sex with prostitutes. But they do not have a lot of feeling with prostitutes while they have to face disease threats. Seeking easy girls is much better. Prostitutes are called “dirty vegetable,” while easy girls are called “safe vegetable.” “Vegetables” can be pregnant.

“Vegetable” does not belong to anyone, so there is an unwritten law: anyone who makes a “vegetable” be pregnant, that man must take the “vegetable” to hospital for having abortion. But who knows who is the “father” of the fetus. Simply, the one who has sex with “vegetable” the last time.

Dangerous motionlessness

In the past, it was very bad if single women were pregnant. Recently, people were not as barefaced as they are today. They tried to hide if they were pregnant without marriage or they made their girlfriends pregnant and had abortion. Now, it is different. It is a small mistake for men to take their girlfriends to hospitals for having abortion.

A 12th grade boy from Hanoi’s Vietnam-Germany High School took his girlfriend, a classmate, to the Hanoi Obstetrics Hospital for having an abortion in his school uniform. His girlfriend had still made-up her face strongly and rubbed on perfume when she came to hospital for abortion. The most important thing that the boy was interested in is: “Service fees at this hospital are expensive, up to a million dong ($50). The last time I took my girlfriend to a private clinic on Giai Phong road, where the fees was a half. We must be careful after this time, otherwise we will go bust!”

Asking a man named Son, who came here with his girlfriend the third time that whether he was afraid if his girlfriend could not have baby again? The man calmly said: “Some friends of mine experienced four abortions, but they still had babies, but a little difficult. Anyway, we probably do not get married. If she does not worry, why do I have to?”

Also that morning, I met with a man from Chuong My district, Hanoi, who came here with the younger sister of his close friend. The man had been here twice with the girl, who was studying at a vocational training school. The girl lived in an inn with her brother. She was pregnant twice with two different men and both of them escaped their responsibility. The girl did not let’s her brother know and she did not have money, so she sought help from her brother’s close friend.

Numbers can talk



According to the latest statistics of the Vietnam Association of Family Planning, there are around 300,000 abortion cases annually of women at the age of 15-19, 60-70 percent of them being students.

In Hanoi, young people account for around 30 percent of the population and they account for over 22 percent of the abortion cases. With this record high number, Vietnam ranks first in Southeast Asian and fifth in the world for the ratio of abortion among teenage.

A doctor of the Hanoi Obstetrics Hospital, who wanted to be anonymous, said that the hospital has to perform dozens of abortion cases a day. Around 20 percent of patients are students. “Are they ashamed? No, not at all. It was in the past,” the doctor said.

The Hanoi-based National Obstetrics Hospital’s latest statistics reveal that of more than 5,000 abortion cases per year at this hospital, up to 30 percent of women were less than 24 years old.

Experts said that a large number of women went to private clinics for having abortions.

Though the threats caused by abortion has been diffused widely on the media but the number of abortion cases keep increasing. That is the manifestation of downgrading in lifestyle and morals. It is dangerous!

Nang Luong Moi