Catholic Information Service for Africa (Nairobi)
26 August 2008
Nairobi — A Catholic lobby group has expressed stiff opposition to plans to legalize abortion on demand in Kenya.
The Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA-Kenya) and the Coalition on Violence Against Women (COVAW) have drafted the Reproductive Health and Rights Bill 2008 and vowed to push for its enactment by Parliament.
There are no statistics on abortion in Kenya, but it is believed that illegal, back-street abortions are widespread. Proponents argue that legalizing abortion and providing the service in public hospitals will save the lives and health of many women who seek the illegal services of quacks.
The new Bill seeks to authorize medical abortion in cases of sexual assault, rape, incest and when the pregnancy puts the mother's life in danger.
But Pro-Life Kenya said that the existing law, which allows abortion in very limited circumstances, is good enough to address matters of reproductive health.
The director, Fr Prof Raphael Wanjohi, said that although the Bill is destined to be an Act of Parliament to provide for the basic right of reproductive health of all couples and individuals to plan the size of their families, it gives priority to the woman and excludes her spouse.
The Bill states that termination of pregnancy may only take place with the consent of the pregnant woman. The practical implication of this, according to Prof Wanjohi, is that couples may be denied the opportunity to lovingly decide whether to have or not to have a baby.
The Bill is also silent on the pre-abortion phase that is providing information on the advantages and disadvantages of contraceptives to the person who is the subject of the prescription.
Medical practitioners will be legally bound either to perform an abortion, or refer the pregnant woman to someone who can provide such service. They will have no option of refusing or talking such a woman out of the abortion.
In actual effect, Prof Wanjohi said, the provision is a calculated attack on fundamental freedom of choice which should include a choice not to abort arising from relevant information against abortion. Though claimed as "pro-choice", the move is essentially "anti-choice".
"The proposed law defines a woman to be any woman of any age, which if taken at face value would define a 10 year old, or even a younger child as a woman. That not withstanding the bill would have it that termination of pregnancy only take place with the consent of the pregnant "woman" and in the provision of reproductive health services to adolescents, parental consent shall not be mandatory."
The Pro-Life Kenya director also noted that the use of the term 'termination of a pregnancy' to mean separation and expulsion by medical or surgical means of the "contents of the uterus" of a pregnant woman before the fetus has become capable of an independent life outside the uterus, rejects the human status of the unborn by use of the word "contents of the uterus".
Among the instances when the termination of pregnancy could be freely undertaken is if pregnancy poses a risk of injury to the woman's physical or mental health.
This provision raises the issue of whether psychological distress occasioned by an unplanned pregnancy would also suffice as injury to mental health and as to whether abortion solves the psychological distress, said Prof Wanjohi.
He also rejected justification of abortion where there is a substantial risk that the fetus would suffer from a severe physical or mental abnormality. "This raises a query as to whether all deformed children have been sentenced to death in their mothers' wombs given that today science has made it possible to detect such deformities at early stages of fetal development. It can further be queried whether this is not an approach to cleansing the human race of any weak species."
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