Editor, RE: “Focus on preventing unwanted pregnancies instead of abortion” (The New Times, November 21). The female of the species is the life-giver and is almost invariably hard-wired to be protective of its young, whether as yet unborn or while still too young to fend for itself. Few females will therefore take the decision to terminate their pregnancies unless they have good reasons, often born of desperation, which pushes them towards that act. It is always easy to be absolutist about choices when you do not have to make them yourself. Which is why, on this matter of choice, I would prefer to listen to women than to men. It is also why I would much prefer to keep the already living than push a desperate woman into the arms of a quack abortionist where both her life and that of her unborn child are equally in danger. Those who would criminalise such girls/women are in effect saying, let them die and go with the aborted fetus – which is very strange indeed as we can be sure their stance won’t prevent girls and women from seeking abortions but rather that only quacks will be prepared to help them about, with all the attendant risks to their lives. A very strange kind of humaneness indeed! Mwene Kalinda
