‘My womb, my choice’

Sex is widely believed to be mainly for procreation; to produce offspring. Only a few species of animals, such as humans, Bonono monkeys and dolphins are said to have the privilege to have sex for pleasure. Otherwise, all the others, including plants, mate out of the primal need to produce offspring and increase the genetic pool before they die. But what happens when a woman is not interested in what is inside her womb? Our correspondent FATSANI GUNYA writes.

In people, pregnancy has proved to be a source of joy to a woman.

But it becomes a different issue when the same woman is not interested in what is inside her womb. After all, not every other sexual intercourse in humans has to translate into pregnancy.

For ages, this has proved to cause tension between a would-have-been father and the woman. This has raised the question of who the real custodian of a pregnancy is between the two.

Margaret Loga, 32, from Chingwalungwalu Village in Balaka, was once caught up in a similar situation. She is now a mother of four.

When she was 21, she tried to get rid of her pregnancy. At the time, she had only two children.

“It was out of frustration due to acts of domestic violence I used to suffer at the hands of my husband. He used to come home late. He stopped paying rent and left me and the children starving,” said Loga.

The family was then living in Chinsapo in Lilongwe.

She said she resorted to hiding the ‘good news’ from the husband and intended to abort s

ecretly.

But Loga only gave up on aborting the baby in her fifth month of the pregnancy. All along, she had been using different methods such as taking herbs to get rid of the ‘unwanted’ child.

“I kept suppressing the pregnancy from him until the day I delivered. I just couldn’t see any reason why we ought to have another child when he failed to provide for the other two. I lost interest in him. My only worry was how I was going to raise the children,” she said.

Loga said she delivered the baby with the help of a traditional birth attendant (TBA). The child, now eight years old, stayed a week with his eyes closed before suffering from periodic visual impairment while growing up.

The boy has mental problems.

Loga believes the condition could be the side effects of the herbs she was taking.

Eleven years down the line, Loga is still with her husband.  They reconciled and now have four children.

Loga is not alone to have had an unwanted pregnancy. She has a friend, Estele, [not her real name], who claims to have been raped in Balaka some years ago.

Now happily married to another man, Estele still lives with the child.

In contrast, 21-year-old Linda Banda, from Makande Village in the same district, never wanted to abort the child she conceived when she was 19.

However, the child’s father wanted her to abort. Then, she was about to sit the Malawi School Certificate of Education (MSCE) Examinations.

“There was just this feeling in me that it was not morally right. Despite knowing that the child would have no support from its father, I just refused to deny it the right to life.

“Today, I look at my child with pride because although it was a pregnancy by chance and not by choice, I kept it,” she said.

Statistics paint a disturbing picture on abortions across the globe.

Dr Babatunde Osotimehin, undersecretary for the UN  population agency UNFPA, cannot agree more.

“Pregnancy complications are the leading cause of death among adolescent girls aged 15 – 19, killing tens of thousands of girls every year. Preventing this tragedy requires that we protect their basic human rights and their right to education and health, and that they are empowered to act in their own interest,” says Osotimehin,

In Malawi, the picture is complicated by the absence of a legal framework promoting safe abortion.

Currently, the Penal Code contains a section that restricts medical professionals to conduct safe abortions on women, which the Coalition for Prevention of Unsafe Abortion (Copua) says is inconsistent with the Constitution.

Thus, abortion in Malawi is restricted to circumstances where the pregnancy puts the life of the pregnant woman in danger.

Copua has urged stakeholders to  revise the law restricting abortion to help deal with what the coalition described as “preventable maternal deaths and unnecessary expenditure.”

Government  spends $45 (about K16 000) on each unsafe abortion case it treats in the absence of an  accommodative legal framework.

Chairperson of Copua Youth Taskforce Desmond Mhango described the statistics on unsafe abortions as appalling.

“These restrictions do not reduce incidences of abortion. Actually, more than 70 000 women have abortions every year while 31 000 of them are treated from complications of unsafe abortions.  In addition, 17 percent of all maternal deaths in the country may be attributable to unsafe abortion.

“The funds spent annually on the 31 000 women and girls treated every year, at K16 000 per case, can be easily diverted to some other good causes such as improving the welfare of health workers in a country where little attention is given to the sector and yet is never an option,” said Mhango.

The organisation says government spends K496 million annually to treat complications that emanate from unsafe abortions.

The country currently registers a maternal death rate of 675 per 1000. Seventeen percent of the deaths are attributed to complications arising from unsafe abortions.

Blantyre-based lawyer and activist Mzati-Kidney Mbeko feels it is high time the law was revised to accommodate those women who may opt for safe abortion without fearing the wrath of the law.

“We need to move with the times. We are still stuck with old pieces of legislation the colonial masters left us long time ago. The colonialists themselves have moved on and conformed to the needs of the modern world.

“This country is a signatory to the Maputo Protocol on health and reproductive rights, but why being signatories to international charters we can’t commit to?” he wondered.

But village head Bubua of Ntcheu says if not properly checked, giving women and girls unrestricted access to safe abortion could encourage promiscuity.

“I feel making abortion legal in the country will take away some customary rights from men because women may begin deciding on their own to terminate a pregnancy. Maybe if we can revisit our thinking on who is the custodian of a pregnancy. We also need to establish when life begins. Is it during conception or at birth? This will help us to ascertain whether we are not terminating another life during abortion,” said Bubua.

Reacting to the village head’s sentiments, Mhango said their advocacy is not for wholesale abortion.

“Actually, we hope there will be some wide consultations before finally settling for the proposed law reform, just as is the case with all similar processes. The law should have clauses to check the act of termination of pregnancy.

“There will be some rules governing the act and we can’t act as savages living in a state of lawlessness. All we want is to safeguard the lives of the mothers, who, for now, may be terminating unwanted pregnancies in an unsafe manner,” he said.

So far, Copua has engaged traditional leaders and government agencies through its Youth leadership for Action on Reproductive Health in Malawi with funding from IPAS.

Centre for Youth and Children Affairs (Ceyca) adds its voice to the demand for a law that supports abortion.

Ceyca executive director Commissioner Rodgers Newa said: “It’s [the advocacy for the law] actually in our domain. The youth should not sit and wait for legal reforms that have a bearing in their lives. They are not going to come unless they take the issues head-on themselves.”