Health stakeholders in the country have urged the government to review some of the Maputo Protocol clauses to reduce maternal mortality.
They urged the government to go through and ratify the protocol on legal termination of unwanted pregnancies to save lives.
This was said in Dar es Salaam on Wednesday by health stakeholders during a one-day workshop on sexual reproductive health dubbed 'National Convening on Advancing Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights Among Adolescent Girls and Women of Reproductive Age in Tanzania'.
Addressing participants of the workshop, Ms Susana Mkanzabi, the UMATI Managing Director said the Maputo Protocol allows someone who becomes pregnant through rape or incest to terminate the pregnancy instead of carrying it to full term.
She said that by endorsing the section which allows termination of such pregnancies, more lives will be saved because most of these victims revert to using unsafe methods when they realise that the law does not allow them to terminate such pregnancies.
"By doing so, the lives of most of these victims will be saved because they will use a safe method of terminating such pregnancies," she said.
On her part, Special Seats Member of Parliament, Ms Hawa Mwaifunga said although there is a law which prohibits this kind of termination, there is need to review the policy otherwise more lives will continue to be lost.
"By the time we leave this place, we should deliberate on the way forward and what to tell Tanzanians, especially in rural areas where we represent them, because a place like Tabora which I represent is one of the leading regions in terms of early pregnancies and marriages," she said.
She said that as legislators, they come across serious cases of incest, giving an example of a young girl in her constituency who ended up committing suicide after she was raped by her father, who apart from making her pregnant, he also infected her with HIV.
She said that it has to reach a point where when they meet to discuss the country's laws on abortion, they should consider young girls who are raped or forced into sexual acts by close relatives.
ALSO READ: Samia issues directives to enhance health sector
Advocate Baraka Tomas on his part said that restricting abortion does not stop it from occurring but does increase the likelihood of women resorting to unsafe and potentially life-threatening methods, saying where abortion is legally permitted, it is not necessarily more frequent, but it is much safer.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
The African Union provides guidance that can help parliamentarians align their laws with the Maputo Protocol and help health ministry's interpret and implement existing abortion laws so that fewer women resort to clandestine and dangerous procedures.
Advocate Baraka quoted article 14(2)(c) of the Maputo Protocol which states that parties must protect the reproductive rights of women by authorising medical abortion in cases of sexual assault, rape and incest and where the continued pregnancy endangers the mental and physical health of the mother or the life of the mother or foetus.
On his part, Doctor Ali Said from Muhimbili Health and Allied Studies (MUHAS) said that every country in the world has its own laws concerning abortion, which means one can do it within or outside the law.
He said most hospitals which offer Comprehensive Post Abortion Care (C-PAC) are faced with challenges when they come across young girls who have used crude methods to terminate their pregnancies, with others losing their lives in the process.
"In most cases we meet so many women who develop serious complications after attempting to terminate their pregnancies because of the methods they employed to do it," he said.
