Eswatini: eSwatini Needs to Talk About Illegal Abortions

analysis

Because pregnancies can only be terminated legally in extreme instances such as rape, many women find other ways. And many do not survive the process.

On 22 May 2000, Elizabeth Matimba and Joyce Mdluli sat on benches in the High Court of Swaziland (eSwatini) in Mbabane and heard Judge Thomas Masuku denounce them for the crime of abortion. Matimba had, in 1998, taken her pregnant daughter to Mdluli, then a nurse at Mbabane Government Hospital, and asked that she terminate the pregnancy. Mdluli obliged. For this crime, the women were both sentenced to five years in jail.

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