Last month, Members of Parliament debated the continued government stand of keeping abortion illegal, with some calling for the total withdrawal of the article from the amended Penal Code. Sunny Ntayombya and Collin Haba took the debate out of the House into the newsroom.
Last month, Members of Parliament debated the continued government stand of keeping abortion illegal, with some calling for the total withdrawal of the article from the amended Penal Code. Sunny Ntayombya and Collin Haba took the debate out of the House into the newsroom.
Collin Haba
When Mary Mwiru (Not real name) got pregnant at age 19, the first thing that came to her mind was to abort. That was six years ago when she was a second year Tanzanian international student in Canada.
"When I was younger, we always had debates in class about abortions and whether it is a good solution,” she said. "I remember I used to be so anti-abortion, but little did I know that I’d have one.”
After three pregnancy tests confirmed her fears, Mwiru walked to an abortion Clinic to book an appointment.
"I never knew that there was a choice. I was thinking that it is okay, I will just have the abortion and continue my life as usual.”
But that was not the case at all. A life was to be ended. Not one but two.
Ten minutes after the procedure, Mary says she was asked to go to a waiting room, (a place where patients rest before leaving the clinic after an abortion.)
"When I entered, I saw how everyone was in pain and crying,” Mary said.
"I asked the doctor if all was out and if I could go. The doctor said ‘yes, we removed both baby sacks, you were expecting twins’.”
Mwiru’s horrific experience is to a great extent a result of the 1988 Supreme Court of Canada ruling that overturned the country’s abortion law leading to the sprouting of abortion clinics.
According to the United Nations, around 34,000 women in Africa die every year as a result of unsafe abortions. - That’s 40% of the global figure. Looking at the numbers, it is evident that outlawing abortions does not prevent them from happening.
It however, forces women into unsafe and uncontrolled environments that would put their lives at a high risk.
Legalising abortion would encourage promiscuity no more than airbags in cars encourage reckless driving. Would a state choose to remove safety standards in order to prevent car crashes?
According to Mwiru, an abortion is the worst thing she would want anyone else to go through.
"I just want people to think about it before they actually have an abortion,” she said. "It is not something you forget after you walk out of the clinic. It haunts your heart for the longest time.”
I truly sympathise with women and men who face the choice to have an abortion or not.
This decision will have lasting consequences regardless of what direction one eventually follows. For those who abort - they know that the story does not end there. So many women and men live with the guilt, depression and other emotional scars. In my view one is better off not aborting a precious innocent child.
There is a popular argument among pro-abortionists that victims of rape or incest should not be forced to bear the child. However, according to a survey by Forrest, J.D. & Torres, A.("Why Do Women Have Abortions?”
Family Planning Perspectives) only 1 % indicated it was a result of rape or incest. In Rwanda, where the law is tough on rapists, such an excuse is absolutely lame.
I can possibly agree that abortion is "absolutely necessary” in only two cases - when the mother’s health or the baby’s health is at risk. However, when seeking an abortion, women don’t feel that abortion is "absolutely necessary.”
They only feel selfishly inconvenienced by the pregnancy and choose to kill the innocent babies so as to get on with a comfortable life.
To my surprise, one of the arguments in the parliament during the abortion debate was that abortion would help in family planning.
To set the record straight, Family planning means contraceptive measures, awareness of the potential responsibilities of parenting, and, if necessary, adopting out the baby. Family Planning does not mean that abortion is "the answer” to "unintended pregnancy”. Rather, family planning is avoiding an unintended pregnancy and dealing with it if it happens. Abortion is only a preliminary way of committing murder.
There has also been some debate that abortion is not murder because the foetus is not yet a human being. One thing for sure, that notion is ill informed. All valid science and medicine has proved that a foetus is 100 percent a person.
Do women have the right to steal the life of a new living being? Killing a person is illegal, so why should a foetal murder be legal? You have to ask yourself these questions and realize that when a woman aborts, she is acting like any other murderer.
If you support abortion I suppose you also support killing all poor, disabled, or just unwanted babies and children. There is no difference.
It is hypocritical and greedy to say the least for those who had a chance to be born into the world to deny others the same chance. The argument on abortion should be simple: if your parents did not abort you, then why should you?