Careful, lest you advance the cause of abortion campaigners

Editor, your article on abortion in Kenya (In the din of moralising preachment, Kenyan girls at mercy of backstreet abortionists) seems to make a case for legalising the vice as well as enhancing contraception provision in the country, paid for by the taxpayer.

The arguments rely on a study carried out by Guttmacher Institute of New York and African Population and Health Research Centre (APHRC) of Nairobi. Guttmacher, as is explained in the article, is a reproductive rights group. It does not get more ambiguous than that, because the term “reproductive rights” includes abortion as part of those rights!

Guttmacher is committed to promoting abortion in the US and all over the world. It was founded as a semi-autonomous division of Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the US started by eugenicist Margaret Sanger.

Can history ever teach us valuable lessons in the area of sexual ethics? Are we willing to stand up for both mother and child?

Planned Parenthood is currently being investigated for trading in dead body parts of aborted foetuses. It is also set to be defunded of US federal dollars in the new (Donald) Trump administration and the money diverted to health centres that do not provide abortion.

UNRELIABLE STATISTICS

We have seen how statistics can at times be unreliable and even manipulated in the just concluded US elections. Abortion is not a solution to solving complex situations of unplanned pregnancies, nor is ignoring the problem a solution.

I suggest that we fight for both mother and child because both deserve a better life. To ignore the fact that the unborn is just as human as you and I is to state that science is false and human reason is incapable of reaching basic conclusions regarding biological and physical evidence. A sonogram would be a good place to start.

I have worked in slums and I am aware of the challenges communities face regarding sexual ethics. Overcrowded and poor shelter complicates life. Insecurity, unemployment and drugs and substance abuse complicate the situation further. These are some of the realities that face our people and we simply cannot solve the problems by inundating them with contraceptives and building abortion facilities.

Take rape, for example. It is a serious crime, but abortion does not solve the crime. It in fact buries the crime and becomes an easy way for perpetrators of such crimes to get away with it.

What if we had better laws and better law enforcement where perpetrators are prosecuted? What if we worked towards improving security for our people? A victim of rape needs psychological and medical assistance, not abortion. Once the girl or mother delivers, she can give up the baby for adoption in case she does not want it. In many cases the victims want to keep the babies.

There are many cases of children conceived in rape who have turned out to be valuable citizens and are forever grateful to their mothers for having been given a chance to live despite the crimes of their fathers.

Many girls who have unplanned pregnancies need real help, and men who become fathers need to play their part. Should they forfeit their responsibility, the law should come to the aid of the girl, for the child is the responsibility of both father and mother.

There have been 59 million abortions in America after the US Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade in 1973. Pro-abortion lobbyists had convinced America that it was a done deal, that soon it will be normal as the country adjusts to the new reality. It was meant to make abortion safe (I wonder what is safe about killing the unborn) and rare. It never became normal, nor safe, nor rare.

The tide is slowly turning in the US; do we need to walk down the same path and decades later curse ourselves for doing it? Can history ever teach us valuable lessons in the area of sexual ethics? Are we willing to stand up for both mother and child?

 

EDITOR’S NOTE: For the record, Planned Parenthood has denied allegations of trading in baby body parts, and says in a statement that a well-funded group established for the purpose of damaging its mission and services has promoted a heavily edited, secretly recorded videotape that falsely portrays its participation in tissue donation programmes that support lifesaving scientific research. Spokesman Eric Ferrero says they help patients who want to donate tissue for scientific research, and that they do so with the full consent from patients “and under the highest ethical and legal standards”. “There is no financial benefit for tissue donation for either the patient or for Planned Parenthood,” Ferrero says. “In some instances, actual costs, such as the cost to transport tissue to leading research centers, are reimbursed, which is standard across the medical field.”