One will occasionally hear the catchy, if emotive Kiswahili tune, Nerea, being played by many, if not all, of the Kigali FM stations. The man in the song beseeches a woman or girlfriend not to abort his unborn child, imploring, Mungu akileta mtoto, huleta sahani yake (When God brings a child, He brings the child’s plate). The man is optimistic the newborn will be catered for in all her needs as she grows up, and perhaps be like the iconic Mandela, if only by Divine intervention. Composed by the popular Kenyan boy band Sauti Sol, the song, most likely, came about in the knowledge that many women and girls terminate their unwanted pregnancies through abortion. If the man is beseeching, it suggests that the woman carrying the baby has a choice. Yet, it inadvertently lays bare the crux of the abortion debate on who should decide whether or not to have a baby. Beyond certain parameters, abortion is illegal in most jurisdictions across the world. The parameters range between those informed by the view that life begins at conception, and the scientific and hotly contested view that it is not so much when life begins, but when the fetus is viable to survive outside the womb after the first trimester (three months). Either way, abortion is only legally allowed in most jurisdictions across the world if pregnancy results from rape, forced marriage, incest, or due to health concerns for the baby or the mother. Rwanda and other East African Community countries allow abortion only to this extent, otherwise it is illegal. In passing, however, it would be worth recalling the history of abortion’s illegality. In her 1997 book “When Abortion Was a Crime”, Leslie Reagan, observes how abortion was not always illegal. Under common law, abortions were legal up to early 19th century, with the purpose behind abortion laws not being to criminalise it, but to protect women from harmful drugs. The term abortion referred only to miscarriages. The earliest laws, passed in the 1820s and 1830s in the United States, for instance, were “poison control measures designed to protect pregnant women… by controlling the sale of abortifacient drugs, which often killed the women who took them.” The criminalization of abortion came about later, primarily under a socially encrusted crusade of one Dr Horatio R. Storer heading the emerging orthodox medical establishment, the American Medical Association, that sought to make abortion at every stage of pregnancy illegal. Dr Storer envisioned the spread of “civilization” west and south by native-born white Americans in a racial sentiment not unlike that of US presidential candidate, Donald Trump. Shall these regions, Dr Storer asked, “be filled by our own children or by those of aliens? This is a question our women must answer; upon their loins depends the future destiny of the nation.” Hostility to immigrants – Mexicans, Chinese, Blacks, Indians and Catholics – fueled this campaign to criminalise abortion. White male patriotism demanded that maternity be enforced among white Protestant women. By this notion spread across the world reaching our African shores through colonialism. But, history aside, and while this is not to condone abortion, it is a fact that many women choose to terminate their pregnancies illegally, often with fatal consequences. The World Health Organization (WHO) observes that legal restrictions often drive abortion underground, where quack doctors make it unsafe with a significant risk of death or disability. WHO estimates that globally, 22 million unsafe abortions take place each year, an overwhelming 98 per cent of which take place in developing countries due to legal restrictions. In Rwanda, available statistics suggest that about 60,000 pregnancies are being terminated each year, the majority of which are unsafe. This calculates to about 25 induced abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44, according to WHO. The rate is a bit higher in the rest of Eastern Africa, at an estimated 36 induced abortions per 1,000. The man and woman in Sauti Sol’s imploring song are only symbolic. But it is my view that there ought to be a legal, policy and social environment across the world supportive of women’s rights to make their own sexual and reproductive health decisions freely and safely.
