|
|
|
10 000 abortions done in SA a week
Independent Online
2007-02-07
For South Africa's anti-abortion campaigners, Thursday was a day of sadness and mourning. But for the government and women's rights groups, it was a day for victory and celebration.
Ten years ago, on February 1 1997, the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act came into effect, becoming one of the most liberal abortion laws in the world.
It ordered that abortion services be made available on request to a woman during her first trimester, or 12 weeks of pregnancy, and also if it was a case of emergency.
Most important, according to rights groups, thousands of women could now access safe and legal abortions and would no longer be forced to resort to clandestine and dangerous backstreets for abortions that left many injured and dead.
Judi Merckel, of the Reproductive Rights Alliance, which helped to lobby the government for the legislation, says the fact that around 530 000 women had legal abortions up to June 2006, demonstrates a steady access to services nationally and progress towards greater service provision.
Mosotho Gabriel, the country director for Ipas, a reproductive health NGO, says the access of women to safe abortions, performed by trained medical staff, has significantly cut abortion deaths.
She cites a 1994 unsafe abortion survey, which estimated that 425 women - almost all black - died each year. Up to 45 000 women were admitted to public health facilities each year with complications from incomplete abortions.
A 1998-2001 mortality study by the Medical Research Council (MRC) found there was a reduction of up to 91 percent in deaths from unsafe abortions.
Rachel Jewkes, director of the MRC's gender and health research unit, hails the act as the most amazing victory for women. It's a celebration of women's access to healthcare in a very tangible way, where they can realise their reproductive rights.
But detractors such as Doctors for Life and the Christian Action Network continue to decry its existence and have mounted one legal challenge after the next to have it scrapped.
They challenge the provision that minors are able to have abortions without the consent of their parents, and claim young girls are using abortion as a means of contraception.
Jewkes discounts this myth propagated by anti-abortion groups to denigrate the act.
Gabriel says the minor provision clause was included in the act primarily to protect young victims of incest and abuse from unsafe abortions. Girls under 18 constitute just 11 percent of all those using the service.
Experts believe access to contraceptives needs to be emphasised, and the attitudes of hostile health workers need to change towards girls seeking abortions and contraceptives.
The act is about protecting young women's health and lives and serves to reduce the overwhelming and negative social and economic impact of child-bearing on their lives, says Merckel.
Cheryllyn Dudley, of the African Christian Democratic Party, says: People are encouraged to think life does not matter... The convenient thing for the government is to make sure there's a butcher shop on every corner to kill innocent children... We salute those doctors who have exercised their rights to conscientious objection.
Monika Molatlhegi, of Doctors for Life, says up to 70 percent of medical staff don't believe in abortion but are forced to perform them against their beliefs.
Siyani Marima, the deputy director for women's health at the national Health Department, says it is expanding values clarification workshops with health workers and communities.
Someone resists termination because of their religious values. But it's not about them - it's about the patient. If someone is admitted, you need to give them care, and don't have to discriminate against them, she says.
Problems with implemen-ting the law persist. Access to services depends on which province you live in. Gauteng, at 208 602, and the Western Cape, at 80 118, account for the bulk of the 530 000 terminations from February 1997 to June 2006.
Most provinces have found that physical resources do not exist in primary health clinics and this may have been underestimated when drafting the law, says Merckel.
Of the 350 state facilities designated to perform the service, 60 percent - mostly hospitals - were functioning.
Efforts are in place to get more community health centres to provide the service, says Marima. Currently about 20 percent do.
Other barriers include long waiting lists, negative staff attitudes, and lack of information and services in rural areas. We need to reach the unreachable, like rural, young girls.
In most homes, talking about sex is a taboo. We need to strengthen service delivery and the availability of resources, says Gabriel.
Kowie Theron, of the Marie Stopes Clinic group, says GPs are selling tablets to induce terminations. This creates problems for government hospitals because most of the women trying this end up at a hospital bleeding.
This article was originally published on page 26 of Saturday Argus on February 03, 2007
|
News
