Rwanda: The Case for Legalizing Abortion
Helen Mwihoreze
The Rwanda constitution states that every person has the right to live. It goes ahead to say that life begins at conception and that abortion will not be permitted unless it is for medical reasons.
Reports indicate however that abortion is widespread among Rwandan teenagers and women in general. Recently I read in a local publication that many people are in jail because of illegal abortions.
Few are aware that pregnancy could be legally terminated to preserve the mother's health.
Despite the stipulations of the constitution, there should be a campaign to pressurize the parties concerned-the hospitals, the ministry in charge of health, the lawmakers etc.-to check rising maternal deaths among women, and women's voices must be raised and heard.
In my opinion women should be left to take charge of their own health. If this isn't the case, government will continue to have on its conscience the deaths of many young women who are forced to resort to illegal and dangerous means to abort. Qualified doctors won't touch you if you want an abortion.
When you see the problem of poverty in Rwanda and the overpopulation, surely the argument for legalizing abortion-in certain cases such as rape (which is widespread in this society, especially in highly impoverished neighborhoods), incest and other unwanted sexual contact-begins to look defensible from all angles: from the angle of mothers who do not have the means to take care of these children; from the angle of the child who as a result will grow up with all sorts of disadvantages; from the angle of society which has very limited resources to take care of its children and so on.
In fact, looked at in another way, the ban on abortion is like punishing a woman by forcing her to take care of an unwanted child and on top of that to possibly watch it suffer and, in a few cases, even die because she is not able to provide the simplest basics-food, medical care etc.
One day, on a visit to Muhima maternity hospital, I watched women being arrested after giving birth because they had no money to pay for the hospital bills and no one to help them with the bills.
Perhaps an abortion would have helped one of these mothers? In the most extreme cases, yes. Sometimes I ask myself what the government plans to do to help with all the unwanted children; is there a plan?
I will leave that in the court of Health Minister Jean Damascene Ntawukuriryayo. There needs to be a serious debate on abortion; on women's choice whether to have a problem baby or not. This even though others have strong beliefs that an embryo is a human being and therefore to abort is to commit murder.
Different cultures however believe embryos or fetuses become human beings at different stages of their development. French law for example states that the dividing line is week 22 of pregnancy, and so abortion can be carried out as long as the fetus is below the recognized time frame. This in my view is a sensible law.
Unfortunately few people take into account the lifelong suffering women face when forced to keep the (unwanted) baby whilst having no serious means of support.
It's therefore very important, in Rwanda's context, to let the voice of the woman who needs an abortion to be heard. Yes. Unwanted embryos should be aborted. Women's right to make decisions on their health and their sexuality must be given due consideration in this society.
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