Make abortion safe, accessible and rare

Why pro-lifers insist in conflating 'maternal health' and 'reproductive rights' with abortion defeats logic. Their insistence that a pregnancy is the beginning of life borders on the sacrilegious - only God creates life. No one will quibble with the demand that abortion be reduced or eliminated entirely. It is in the manner by which this laudable goal is achieved that he pro-life and pro-choice camps have pitched tent debate and waged their culture wars that have defined the debate. Each has sought to marshall their forces to demonstrate why the other side is wrong. Since the United States Supreme Court ruled in Roe -v- Wade regarding this intractable question, the pro-choice and pro-life camps have waged their wars increasingly on a global scale, trampling on the traditions and cultures of others in their pitched battles. This war has now crossed over into Kenya, and Charles Kanjama is one of the soldiers in the pro-life camp, and his valiant efforts at defining the law on the question in Kenya are both laudable and worrying at the same time. Writing in today's Standard on Sunday, Mr Kanjama attempts to describe a conspiracy by the pro-choice camp to expand the meaning and the limits of Art 26 of the Constitution (Constitution is being assaulted like 1812 Moscow).

In Kenya, maternal healthcare and reproductive rights are not subjects that come up in ordinary conversation. Kenyans, to an overwhelming degree, are concentrated almost religiously to the political questions of the day and the increasingly high cost of living. Banner headlines in Kenya's newspapers ted towards the chances of one politician or the other at the presidency or the cost of living as experienced by the working classes. The subject of abortion is limited to the elite in Kenya, men and women with time on their hands and food in their belly to address a subject that very rarely affects them or their own. In fact, this is demonstrated by the very fact that the politicians who would be charged with passing legislation over this contentious subject barely give it the attention it deserves, what with their being preoccupied with either retaining their political power or ascending to the residency some time in their lives.

Primary healthcare in Kenya, as with other social programmes that were once fully financed by the government, is no longer a priority. A corrupt government, coupled by a corrupt political class and a weakening economy have conspired to reduce the per capita spending by the government on primary healthcare. As a result, crucial funding for maternal healthcare has plummeted and the statistics regarding the number of mothers and infants that survive pregnancy for the working classes are shocking, to say the least. In Kenya if you are poor, young, semi-literate and unemployed, an unplanned pregnancy is a risk that you can ill afford. Not only will you not receive the best pre-natal and ante-natal care at you local hospital or healthcare facility, it is unlikely that you will offer your infant child the kind of life that he deserves. The choice to terminate the pregnancy, eve when your life is not at risk, begins to look attractive when you factor in the religious and socio-cultural stigma that you will attract from the opinion-makers in your community, not to mention the strife that will befall you in your own family. Dr Jean Kagia of the Protecting Life Movement Trust is correct when she says that the problem of unwanted pregnancies is a social, not medical, problem but she is wrong in prescribing an absolute ban on abortions as the solution.

Social scientists will inform you that it is near impossible to change a people's culture and so it has proven in Kenya regarding the place in the community of teenage mothers or single mothers. The church and society have conspired to stigmatise these women regardless of the hardships they endure. The Protecting Life Movement Trust, in addition to campaigning for a ban on all abortions, could also take the lead in ensuring that the religious and cultural norms and mores of Kenyans are more accommodating of women in crisis situations, such as unplanned pregnancies. Even Dr Kagia and Mr Kanjama will admit that there is something inherently morally wrong in a girl carrying to term a pregnancy that was as a result of rape or incest and they must advise us in how we can protect young girls and women from such situations. We must learn from the mistakes of the Americans and not turn this subject into an either/or demand; American society has been the poorer as a result of the cultural wars waged by the pro-lifers and pro-choicers. Until we can improve the situation in our hospitals and until we can protect women and girls from crisis pregnancies, we should, as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have asked, ensure that abortion is safe, accessible and rare.