SADC civil society intensifies efforts to review abortion care legislation 

Civil society organisations (CSO) in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region are engaged in collaborative efforts to review abortion care legislation in a bid to protect over 25 million unsafe abortions that currently occur each year around the world, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates.  

The Southern Africa AIDS Dissemination Service (SAfAIDS) is leading an SADC-wide ‘My Choice, Our Choice’ campaign for legislation to enable safe abortion.

SAFAIDS is a centre of excellence that focuses on promoting effective and ethical development responses for sexual and reproductive health and rights, HIV — including prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV — and tuberculosis. 

CSOs engaged in the campaign include Genderlinks through the Southern Africa Gender Protocol Alliance, Women’s Action Group in Zimbabwe and Safe Abortion Alliance of Southern Africa.

In a presentation drawing from the 2022 Voice and Choice Barometer chapter on safe abortion commissioned by Genderlinks under the Southern Africa Gender Protocol Alliance, a bill was tabled in Madagascar on abortion issues and there are ongoing consultations in Namibia on the same issues, noted Lynette Mudekunye, an independent public health expert. 

There is mobilisation in Malawi, Lesotho, Eswatini, Botswana and other countries in the SADC region on abortion care issues against well-funded global anti-abortion actors, she added.

Gender activists from across southern Africa on had launched the ‘Voice and Choice 2019 Barometer’ alongside the State of Women in SADC 2019 report. 

The barometer has been produced by the Southern African Gender Protocol Alliance, a network of women’s rights organisations that campaigned for the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development in 2008, its updating and alignment to the Sustainable Development Goals in 2016. 

One of the key findings of the two reports was that only South Africa and Mozambique had legislation that allowed abortion on demand in the first trimester.

Abortion was also available under certain circumstances in all SADC countries with varying degrees of restriction.

The report also revealed that only six SADC countries — DRC, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, South Africa and Zambia — had stand-alone adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights policies or strategies. 

Also only five countries — Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Tanzania — in SADC did not require parental consent for adolescents to access SRHR services.

According to Mudekunye on decriminalisation, the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR) launched an African campaign for the decriminalisation of abortion on January 18, 2016.

She said that the commission called on governments to decriminalise abortion for the sake of girls’ and women’s rights and wellbeing.   

She also highlighted global frameworks such as the WHO 2022 abortion care guidelines (first to recommend full decriminalisation of abortion) and the International Federation for Gynaecology and Obstetrics, which issued a statement in February 2022 calling for decriminalisation to shift from unsafe to safe abortions.

‘Decriminalisation means removing abortion from all penal / criminal laws, not applying other criminal offences such as murder and manslaughter to abortion and ensuring there are no criminal penalties for having, assisting with, providing information about, or providing abortion, for all relevant actors,’ Mudekunye said.

Decriminalisation would ensure that anyone who has experienced pregnancy loss does not come under suspicion of illegal abortion when they seek care, she noted.

“Forced or coerced abortion would constitute serious assaults as these would be non-consensual interventions,” Mudekunye said.

WHO emphasised that all individuals engaging in self-management of medical abortion needs accurate information and quality-assured medicines, including for pain management, the support of trained health workers, access to a healthcare facility and to referral services if they need or desire it.

The estimated annual abortion rate was 40 in Mozambique, 31 in Botswana, 30 in South Africa, 29 in Namibia and 18 in Zimbabwe for 2015-19, the development practitioner noted.

She also highlighted existing and cross-cutting legislation in SADC region on abortion which includes stand-alone law, penal code, risk to life, rape or sexual abuse, foetal anomaly, risk to physical or mental health, social and economic reasons and on request.

In 2022, WHO released new guidelines on abortion care in a bid to protect the health of women and girls around the world.

According to WHO, based on the latest scientific evidence, these consolidated guidelines bring together over 50 recommendations spanning clinical practice, health service delivery and legal and policy interventions to support quality abortion care. 

The organisation said that when carried out according to its guidelines, abortion is a simple and safe health intervention. 

It added that the new guidelines will support access to comprehensive and quality abortion care within national health systems in the WHO European Region and globally.

According to recent media reports, France has become the first country in the world to explicitly include the right to abortion in its constitution.

The country’s parliamentarians voted to revise the country’s 1958 constitution to enshrine women’s guaranteed freedom to abort.

The overwhelming 780-72 vote is reported to have seen a standing ovation in the parliament in Versailles when the result was announced.

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