Abortion sparks heated debate at Ticad side event

Zambian economist Highvie Hamdudu confers with his Cameroonian counterpart Marie Rose Nguini Effa during a discussion on reproductive health for the youth in Africa at a Ticad side event in Nairobi on August 26, 2016. PHOTO | AGGREY MUTAMBO |

What you need to know:

  • An estimated 266 Kenyan women die per 100,000 unsafe abortions annually.
  • In Kenya, the government clashed with civil society groups early in March after they sued the Ministry of Health for withdrawing guidelines on safe abortions.

Government health officials clashed on Friday with representatives of a global reproductive health campaigner over the approach to be taken on abortion policy.

At event to discuss reproductive health in Africa, Health Principal Secretary Nicholas Muraguri argued the debate on legalising abortion should instead be turned into a campaign to prevent teenage pregnancies.

“We remain committed as a country to ensure that people are able to access all the services they need and the debate about abortion can continue.

"But more important, we know that abortion is a reflection of unwanted pregnancies,” he said during the discussion at a side meeting to the sixth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (Ticad) in Nairobi.

“We need to step back and ask ourselves, “Why are we making them pregnant when they don’t want to get pregnant?’ That is where the debate should start. We don’t ask ourselves those questions,” he said.

But the comment appeared to contradict the views of another panellist, Tewodros Malesse, the director-general of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, a US organisation that offers sexual and reproductive health campaigns around the world for people “to make their own choices.”

“This thing of moralising when the women are dying, and when children are born they are not going to school or are in the streets, the consequence of unwanted pregnancies…

“I think this issue of morality has to come to a professional discussion. There are so many things about morality. We can talk about food, we can talk about so many things but I think abortion has to be taken not as an issue of morality but an issue of health, Dr Melesse argued.

GUIDELINES

The event, whose theme was "accountability for sexual and reproductive health: a call to action", had been organised by the African Union Commission's Department of Social Affairs.

But as panellists, among them AU Commissioner for Social Affairs Mustapha Kaloko and Cameroonian MP Marie Rose Nguini Effa, spoke, it became apparent that the issue of reproductive health among the youth and abortion was hot.

In Kenya, the government clashed with civil society groups earlier in March after they sued the Ministry of Health for withdrawing guidelines on safe abortions.

Dr Muraguri, then director of medical services, had in 2014 advised health workers not to offer any abortion on demand and went on to withdraw the “Standards and Guidelines for Reducing Morbidity and Mortality from Unsafe Abortion in Kenya.”

But the petitioners the Federation of Women Lawyers in Kenya, two community human rights mobilisers and an adolescent girl who developed complications after an unsafe abortion said the move would make more girls choose dangerous abortions.

The case will be heard after a new Chief Justice appoints a three-judge bench to hear it.

In Kenya, abortion is illegal unless it is authorised by a qualified health official when the health or life of the mother is in danger.

In 2012, about 120,000 women were admitted to public hospitals and health centres for abortion-related complications, likely due to unsafe abortions, according to the same ministry.

An estimated 266 Kenyan women die per 100,000 unsafe abortions annually.