MoH swings, misses on abortions
Mmegi Editor | Thursday July 28, 2016 11:00
As commendable as these new methods are in the fight against unwanted pregnancies, long-term statistics around overall maternal health indicate that authorities are swinging and missing with regards to unsafe abortions.
The AIDS Impact Survey of 2011 found that 50.2 percent of pregnancies countrywide were unplanned for, while complications from abortions were the third highest cause of maternal deaths in 2014. A study conducted in Francistown between 2007 and 2009 found that 35 percent of pregnancies were unwanted and no doubt similar or even higher rates can be found in Gaborone.
At the same time, contraceptive and birth control usage rates are unimpressive at about 52.3 percent as at the 2007 Botswana Family Health Survey, despite a 98 percent rate of knowledge of family planning methods. The numbers suggest a misdirection of policy, as seen in the paradox of high knowledge of family planning, diversity of methods and high unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortions.
This week’s launch of new birth control measures follows down a policy line riddled with loopholes and which – going by the data – is incongruent with the situation on the ground.
The trouble is very clearly the existing laws which penalise abortion except under three scenarios: pregnancy as a result of rape, defilement or incest, pregnancy that puts the life of the mother at risk or pregnancy where the unborn child would suffer or later develop physical or mental abnormality.
In various high level fora, women have called for the decriminalisation of abortion, explaining the numerous reasons for opting for abortion. These include mothers not being financially ready, fear of discovery by family (dishonour, shame, disrespect), family planning method failure, desertion by partner, pressure from family, peers and partners and others.
Rather than thoroughly interrogating the reasons behind unsafe abortions and gathering bottom-up data from affected groups, public health authorities are shying away from lobbying for the decriminalisation of abortion.
The sections of the Penal Code criminalising abortion are based on moral values and societal situations far removed from today’s reality where modern Botswana is dominated by single mothers, child-headed families and runaway fathers.
Only once was the law around abortions amended and that was in 1991, when the three exceptions were introduced. It has, apart from that, remained unchanged since independence, leaving many young, desperate women to fall prey to self-styled practitioners of unsafe abortions.
Today’s thought
“Motherhood should not be used as punishment for having unprotected sex and falling pregnant”
– Participant at a Botswana Family Welfare Association panel discussion