The trailer for Sai Pallavi's Karu has gone viral. The clip begins with the definition of abortion and goes on to give us a hint about what's to come in the film. From the looks of it, the character that Sai Pallavi plays, gets pregnant and is forced to abort the foetus by her family. She then gets married and the aborted foetus comes back to haunt the family as a little girl.
This is, of course, only a guess based on what we see in the trailer.
Pregnancy and abortion have been common tropes in the horror genre. From the Western classic Rosemary's Baby to the recently released Prithviraj-Priya Anand film Ezra to the Siddharth-Andrea starrer Aval, the pregnant woman and what she carries within has always been a subject that's of interest to the genre. The Malayalam film Kana Kanmani, a remake of the Hindi film Gauri: The Unborn, was about an aborted foetus who tries to kill the child her parents eventually have.
Despite advancement in the medical field which allows us to look into the uterus and monitor the foetus very closely, the appeal of an "unknown" evil incubating within a woman's body has not disappeared. The announcement of pregnancy in a horror film always comes with a sense of foreboding (in the thriller genre, it's a sign that the character will die - films like Solo and Theeran Adhigaaram Ondru are recent examples). It brings up the question of whether the mother should continue with the pregnancy or abort the "evil" inside her - most times, the mother triumphs and somehow saves the foetus.
Although India has among the most liberal laws when it comes to abortion (not to be confused with female feticide), in comparison to other countries, the act is often equated to murder on screen. This is true of films that don't belong to the horror genre as well.
In the Malayalam film Take Off, for instance, when Sameera (Parvathy) wants to abort her foetus because she's in a very difficult position in her personal and professional space, Shaheed (Kunchacko Boban) tells the doctor that he's unwilling to let her "kill the baby" and insists that she continue with the pregnancy. And she does.
Even if the character may not be married to the man in question, abortion is still unlikely to be shown as a choice a woman makes on screen. Be it Sindhu Bhairavi, Paa, Kaatru Veliyidai, or Arjun Reddy, the woman decides to keep the foetus.
In the Tamil film Aadhalal Kadhal Seiveer, which is about a college girl who gets pregnant, the character does consider abortion seriously but she eventually keeps the foetus. In the Malayalam film Utharam, a gangrape victim becomes pregnant and later kills herself when she finds out that the child who was moved to an orphanage has become a ragpicker.
Films like Ayutha Ezhuthu, where a woman makes the choice to abort the fetus (she does it in anger against her husband who refuses to give up his violent ways), are rare. In Kuttram 23, which is about a medical scam in the field of fertility, a woman who was impregnanted with another man's sperm decides to go in for an abortion but is murdered.
Abortion (non sex selective) is an important reproductive right, especially in a country where women's access to contraception faces many constraints. It is not an easy choice for most women to make and many suffer from guilt for years. However, despite it being legal, women who want to abort an unwanted pregnancy come under intense scrutiny and judgment by society and even the medical fraternity. The vilification of abortion on screen is a reflection of this and also reiterates the perception.
It will be interesting to see how AL Vijay has handled the issue in Karu. Hopefully, the film will take the various aspects of abortion and pregnancy into consideration even as it plays up these familiar tropes of the horror genre.