By Mufaro Musiyazviriyo
The Termination of Pregnancy Act of 1977 states that it is illegal to terminate a pregnancy unless it has been sanctioned by Government authorities which includes, the court and state hospitals agreeing that the pregnancy in question was as a result of unlawful intercourse (rape/incest). The Act also allows for termination of pregnancy if the pregnancy endangers the life of the women or the child to be born will suffer from a physical or mental defect of such a nature that they will permanently be seriously handicapped.
Despite the law allowing for termination under certain circumstances, there are incidents where abortion was supposed to be allowed by the Government authorities but the draconian procedures led to some giving birth, some suffering impairments and in worst cases succumbing due to unsafe abortion complications.
Nokutenda Hwaramba (15), Memory Machaya (14) and many other young girls whose stories are unknown because they kept away from the public ears died due the pregnancy related complications despite the law recognizing that children below the age of 18 cannot consent to sex making their pregnancies to be a result of unlawful intercourse.
The majority of women who opt for unsafe abortions, which sometimes turn fatal know that their fate, demise and future is yoked on a piece of legislation that was promulgated in 1977 and some of these women are unaware of this legislation and to their knowledge abortion is not permitted in Zimbabwe as was shown by the signs that were hung on tree in the streets of Harare stating that, “ABORTION IS A CRIME” or “ABORTION IS MURDER.”
The Ministry of Health and Child Care introduced the post-abortion care guidelines which allow women and girls to receive post abortal care at any state health institutions without being questioned. These guidelines were set after noticing that the cause of the high maternal deaths was as a result of unsafe and illegal abortions occurring in the country.
Civil society groups and other organisations have been tirelessly in pleading with the policy makers to look into the Termination of Pregnancy Act of 1977 and restructure it to serve the needs of the women. These efforts by human rights advocates are commendable and have made the public and stakeholders to start conversing about abortion in Zimbabwe which was regard as a taboo topic. These conversations have opened up so many opinions from the public, with most of them acknowledging that abortions are happening in their respective communities but some not willing to have abortion legalised, fearing that it would erode their social norms.
These conversations show that structuring the abortion laws alone is problematic as it ignores important aspects and conditions in which women can seek termination of pregnancy. A typical example, is that of South Africa that have a progressive legislation governing access to abortion services but this has not translated on the ground. South Africa still has many cases of unsafe abortions (Jewkes, Brown, Dickson-Tetteh, Levin & Rees 2002) The silence around abortion as well as experiences of ostracization among women who have terminated suggest that stigma is still very high and that it still plays a role in abortion practices and experiences, as well as reproductive decision-making.
The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists under the Making Abortion Safe (MAS) enrolled champions to address unsafe abortions in Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Nigeria, Sierra Leon and Sudan. The selected champions took part in the value clarification attitudes transformation (VCAT) training using the Ipas toolkit at the beginning of the project. The value clarification theory was inspired by the field of humanistic psychology led by thinkers as Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers, who believed that people are responsible for discovering their values through honest, open-minded self-examination. According to UNESCO 2006 it is a technique that encourages people to relate their thoughts and feelings in order to enrich their awareness of their own values.
Zimbabwe champions took up the VCAT approach to start conversations on making abortion safe in Zimbabwe. The discussions largely dwelled around, the myths and misconceptions around abortion, legal literacy on abortion, how socialization has an impact on one’s values, exploring religious and cultural arguments on abortion. The VCATs were conducted in universities across Zimbabwe targeting young learners and communities targeting parents and custodians of culture.
The most popular description of abortion from the participants during the VCATs was the terming of the procedure as “killing of an unborn baby” hence the need for a discussion on language and correct terminology. A popular debate arose consistently in the VCATs conducted on the difference between the term unborn baby and foetus, with majority of the participants, particularly young women arguing that once one instantly got pregnant, a life would begin to form in a woman’s womb.
This debate was backed up by biblical knowledge with some participants quoting and reading out bible verses that described life hence the justification for the term killing. In an interesting discussion with the young people, one quoted the bible saying that, “children are gifts from God” and a response from another young man was, “can a gift come from a sin?” His argument was that fornication is a sin and many of the people that seek termination of pregnancy the pregnancy is as a result of pre-marital sex. An analysis of that discussion showed that the values many of the young people had on abortion were stemmed in religious beliefs and moral upbringing.
Some of the reservations on abortion included how involving women’s rights in terms of choice and bodily autonomy was a direct abuse and misuse of the right. One of the young women questioned why abortion was only being centred on women’s rights and not men’s rights as women were only mainly ‘responsible for carrying the pregnancy to term but the pregnancy had an “owner” who has more rights over what happens to that life’. The term that was given to describe that in local Zimbabwean language was ‘samusha’ which translated means ‘owner of the home or head of the household’ and this is the represented by the male figure in that home. Many young women agreed with this to a larger extent, and this shows how deeply young girls are entrenched in patriarchal values from birth and this hinders them to make decisions.
Cross the Line activity is one of the activities conducted during the VCAT which directly interrogates the different values and beliefs of individuals towards abortion. In reference to whether it was killing, at least 95% crossed the line in confirmation and the reasoning was based majorly on biblical standing. An analysis of this activity showed that many young people were sexually active and that they understood the task and responsibility of parenting a child, but that however they feared societal judgement associated more with abortion above everything else. Another observation was that many young people would neither cross the line or stay where they were but many would stay in the middle thus showing how conflicted they are between their understanding of rights, the needs of termination and their values and beliefs.
In another activity during the VCATs, one young person admitted to breaking a friendship with one of the students that had been known to have had an abortion. She stated that she did not mind playing with her friend but when the story became public knowledge, she distanced herself for fear of being put in the same category as her friend. She went further to say that other young women would rather die than live with the shame of being known to have committed such a taboo act as they cannot stand the name calling and fingers pointed.
