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Illicit abortions on the rise despite health risks and legal hazards
Residents of Nairobi’s Huruma area look in horror at seven foetuses dumped in an open sewer last year. Local clinics that conduct illegal abortions were suspected to have dumped the foetuses. Photos/FILE
Posted Tuesday, September 8 2009 at 22:30
In Summary
- Some 300,000 women in the country get rid of their ‘unwanted’ pregnancies annually
According to Guttmacher Institute, a think tank that advances sexual and reproductive health worldwide, an estimated 14 per cent of all pregnancies in Kenya end in abortion and nearly one in five maternal deaths are a result of unsafe abortion.
Statistics from the Demographic Health Survey of 2003 show that 30 to 50 per cent of all maternal deaths are directly attributed to unsafe abortion.
A subsequent assessment on unsafe abortions conducted in May 2004 by researchers from the Kenya Medical Association, Federation of Women Lawyers of Kenya and Ipas, a non-profit organisation dedicated to improving women’s lives internationally through focusing on reproductive health, also showed an increased rate in unsafe abortions in the country.
The study, which covered 65 public hospitals, shows that an estimated 20,000 women are hospitalised with abortion-related complications in the public health sector alone each year.
Last year when Parliament debated the Reproductive Health and Rights Bill of 2008, it sparked protests from religious groups and the Catholic Church led hundreds of followers into the streets to demonstrate against the Bill, which they said sought to legalise abortion.
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