By Mabinty Kamara
A meeting by prochoice campaigners on Wednesday turned out to be a disappointment after it emerged that most of those invited were against the controversial piece of legislation stuck in parliament in the face of widespread opposition from religious leaders.
The meeting was convened by the Women’s Forum Network which said it was meant to get other women to understand the necessity of the proposed ‘Safe Abortion Act 2015’.
Charles Vandi, Director of Gender, Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs, said that as a ministry they had sanctioned the meeting to allow for more women to express their views on it.
Vandi affirmed the ministry’s support for the bill, saying they were behind it: “today, tomorrow and even the day after”.
The ministry’s support for the bill is in line with its position on the Maputo Protocol, a treaty of the African Union which entails aspects of women’s rights including safe abortion in instances when the mother’s life is at risk.
Vandi said the ministry had done much research in both Muslim and Christian countries and had compared the laws there on abortion and found out that there wasn’t much difference.
“But since the bill is a private member motion, we as a government do not want to take the lead [but rather] to give women the space to have their say on this bill,” he said, adding that that’s why they’d asked the Women’s Forum Network to bring women together to get their views on the proposed law.
Evelyn Nonie, a mother of two who strongly opposes the bill, said stringent measures should be put in place to deal with rapists, apparently in response to concerns over victims of rape who get pregnant. She also called for action against medical practitioners and patients who conduct abortion in secret.
Nonie said it was everyone’s responsibility, including parents, to put a stop to teenage pregnancy so that there would be no need for abortion of unwanted babies.
“If these things are being done, we will not be here debating abortion. As for me, there is nothing like ‘safe abortion’ as all abortion is dangerous,” she told the gathering.
Nasu Fofanah, former Presidential adviser on gender, a proponent of the bill, said that whenever it came to issues relating to women there was a lot of controversy by men and even some of the women folks. She made reference to a number of girls housed by the charity Don Bosco as examples of the problems women faced in a society replete with sexual violence, hence the need for the abortion law.
Girls are mostly impregnated by men three times older than them, turning them into “a nuisance” in the society, she said.
Winnie Wilson, a pastor of the Living World of Faith church, reiterated the position of the religious leaders saying that except on medical grounds, the ‘safe abortion bill’ must be discarded.
Lillian Kumba Lahai, a midwife of the Methodist Church clinic, advised that based on her experience in counselling many women and girls seeking to undertake abortion, the bill be passed into law so that people would know the right places to go to when the need arose. Otherwise, she said, they would seek redress from quacks.
Maud Peacock, president of the Women’s Forum Network, said the bill would give women a choice of motherhood. But she ended up being disappointed by the position of the majority of the participants.
(C) Politico 11/02/16
