Dominic Waweru
4 September 2008
opinion
Nairobi — At the centre of the controversial debate that seeks to legalise abortion is a tricky connivance with terms. In the connivance, abortion passes for reproductive health.
According to a story carried by the Saturday Nation on August 23, the controversial proposed Bill by Federation of Women Lawyers (Fida) and the Coalition On Violence Against Women (Covaw), "seeks to provide for the recognition of the right of women to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and the right to make decisions regarding reproduction without discrimination."
If, in fact, that was all about the Bill, it would not have generated much heat.
A Bill that seeks to legislate on women's rights in matters of reproduction and that directly involve and affect them, would draw no controversy were it not couched in ambiguous language.
For far too long, women have been denied justice on a score of issues on the basis of whimsical and prejudicial traditions.
Often, those traditions have hinged on illogical notions and absurdities by men about women.
However, the controversy surrounding the abortion law has to do with the definition and understanding of abortion.
According to the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English, abortion is the expulsion of the foetus from the womb during the first 28 weeks of pregnancy.
Moralists, pro-lifers, religious leaders, all belonging to the functionalist school of thought, will not agree with the above definition.
To them, abortion is simply the termination of life of an unborn child; murder in simple terms. To them then, abortion is unacceptable.
The liberalist, in which fold belong Fida and Cowav, will not take that. Abortion, to them, is not a matter belonging exclusively to the religious domain.
Former nominated MP Njoki Ndung'u, was quoted by the Nation as saying, "Religion, just like abortion, is an individual's choice, which they should let women make." And here lies the controversy.
Who has the right to make the decision over the abortion matter? The conservatives, going by religion and faith, maintain that life belongs to God and He only has the right to its determination.
The activists on the other hand, see abortion as a label to a human action that a woman must be empowered to make without religious, social or cultural coercion.
At the realm of academic argument, the abortion debate is both a scientific and medical argument as much as it is a moral and religious one.
At that level of academic discussion, however, dragging God into the argument shuts off the debate. You can't argue with God!
Yet science and religion do have a legitimate claim to expansion of thought and advancement of ideas on the issue: none is any wiser to shut its ears to the other.
Like in female circumcision, where the church has come up with an alternative rite of passage to counter the limiting and pejorative label, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), the Church has to come up with an alternative approach, if it hopes to successfully maintain its stake in the abortion debate.
The challenge that faces the Church today in this matter is relevance and conviction in a world that has plummeted into extreme secularism and liberalism.
The powers and the voices that are informing and shaping the opinion of modern Christian generation on the abortion issue and other controversial moral issues are not exclusively the sermons that emanate from the pulpits.
The power of the media, informed by secularism and steeped in liberalism, is the challenge that the Church has really to reckon with.
The Church would have to pump in lots of money to keep abreast with the secular forces. Does it have the funds to do so?
Father Waweru is also a freelance journalist and teacher in the Catholic diocese of Ngong.
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It is not very healthy fo the child is it?