By Michael Gwarisa
At 16, Rita Muzadzi (Real name protected) was preparing for her Ordinary Level examinations in Epworth when she discovered she was pregnant.
The boy she had been dating, also 16, rejected the pregnancy. Frightened and unsure where to turn, Rita did not tell her mother. Instead, she sought help from an elderly traditional healer in her neighbourhood.
She says she first tried drinking water mixed with banana roots after hearing that it could terminate a pregnancy. She later attempted to drink washing powder but stopped because of its taste. Eventually, she used another herb, inserting its stick into her reproductive tract.
She began bleeding.
“I bled non-stop for seven days,” Rita recalls.
She hid the bleeding from her family, telling them she was experiencing a heavy menstrual period. But as the bleeding became increasingly severe, she began to fear for her life.
“I thought I was going to die,” she says. “As I was bleeding, my mind wondered: What if I die? What if this is the end of it all for me?”
Rita is now 30, but says the experience has stayed with her. She continues to experience abdominal cramps which she associates with the abortion, although she has never had a medical assessment to establish whether there are lasting physical complications. She also says the experience continues to affect her emotionally.
Her story belongs to another period in Zimbabwe’s abortion debate. But the question it raises remains relevant today: if a frightened 16-year-old became pregnant now, would Zimbabwe’s laws give her a safer route to healthcare?
The answer is not straightforward.
Zimbabwe’s abortion framework is caught between an unresolved constitutional challenge over the rights of pregnant minors and a new health law that has strengthened children’s rights to access healthcare without parental interference.
The abortion debate, in effect, has moved from the courtroom to the clinic.
From the courts to healthcare
In 2024, Women and Law in Southern Africa (WLSA) and Talent Forget challenged Zimbabwe’s Termination of Pregnancy Act. Forget had become pregnant at 17 and argued that the law unfairly excluded pregnancies resulting from sexual intercourse with minors from the definition of “unlawful intercourse”.
In November 2024, High Court judge Justice Maxwell Takuva ruled that denying children access to safe abortion in circumstances involving unlawful sexual intercourse was unconstitutional. The judgment described forcing a child to carry a pregnancy or resort to an illegal abortion as cruel and degrading treatment.
The ruling appeared to mark a significant development in children’s reproductive rights.
But it did not remain the final word.
In August 2026, the Constitutional Court set aside the High Court judgment and returned the matter for a fresh hearing. The court found that the State and Parliament had not properly participated in the original proceedings, meaning important arguments had not been fully considered.
The Constitutional Court did not rule that the challenged abortion provision was constitutional. Instead, the substantive question remains before the High Court: should pregnancies resulting from sexual intercourse with minors qualify for lawful termination under Zimbabwe’s abortion law?
For girls facing an unwanted pregnancy, that distinction matters. The specific constitutional question remains unsettled, while the health consequences of teenage pregnancy and unsafe abortion remain immediate.
A broader constitutional question
Tinashe Mundawarara the board Chairperson for the Health Law and Policy Consortium argues that the abortion question cannot be considered only through the Termination of Pregnancy Act.
Her presentation at a media forum on access to abortion for minors points to several constitutional protections that intersect when the pregnant person is a child: the right to health under Section 76, the child’s right to equal treatment and to be heard, protection from sexual exploitation and, under Section 81(2), the requirement that the best interests of the child be paramount. The Constitution also makes the High Court the upper guardian of children’s rights.
Mundawarara argues that this creates a broader legal question around access to abortion where the procedure is otherwise lawful.
She says the constitutional right to health includes reproductive health services and argues that denying a minor access to abortion in circumstances where it is legally available can raise questions of both health rights and equality.
Her argument also connects abortion access to the constitutional protection of children from sexual exploitation. Where a child becomes pregnant as a result of unlawful sexual intercourse, she argues, the circumstances of that pregnancy must be considered alongside the legal grounds for termination under the Termination of Pregnancy Act.
These are arguments now sitting alongside, rather than replacing, the unresolved court challenge.
A new law changes the healthcare question
While the abortion case returns to the High Court, Parliament has introduced another important change.
The Medical Services Amendment Act, 2026, gazetted in July, introduced Section 8D, which makes it unlawful for a parent or guardian to prevent a child from receiving a health service that is in the child’s best interests.
A parent or guardian who contravenes the provision can face a fine or up to one year in prison.
The Act also provides that children who are capable of understanding must be informed about their healthcare, even where they do not have the legal capacity to provide informed consent themselves. The legislation was ultimately enacted as Act No. 3 of 2026.
For Mundawarara, this is significant because the new law places the best interests of the child more firmly at the centre of healthcare decisions.
“The Medical Services Amendment Act, 2026, did mention that children’s access to healthcare is to be facilitated in line with the best interest of the child,” he said.
Mundawarara interprets the provision as limiting a parent’s ability to prevent a child from accessing a health service that is in the child’s best interests, including reproductive-health services where those services are otherwise lawful.
But there is an important legal distinction.
The new law does not, by itself, create a blanket right to abortion for minors. Section 8D deals with access to healthcare generally. Whether an abortion is lawful remains governed by the Termination of Pregnancy Act and the circumstances recognised under that law.
In other words, the new legislation may change the question of who can prevent a child from accessing healthcare, without necessarily changing the separate question of when an abortion is legally permitted.
That distinction will be critical for health workers, parents and children trying to understand what the law means in practice.
The gap between law and practice
For reproductive-health advocate Memory Kadau, one of Zimbabwe’s biggest problems remains the gap between what the law says and what people understand it to mean.
“Where is the disconnect in terms of us understanding what the law says, what the practice is?” she asks.
That disconnect can be particularly dangerous for teenagers. A pregnant girl may not know whether she can seek help, whether parental involvement is required or where she can obtain lawful reproductive-health services. Fear of stigma can push her away from formal healthcare altogether.
Rita’s experience illustrates what can happen in that gap.
Mundawarara argues that the best-interests principle also has to take account of the medical consequences of pregnancy in children. His presentation points to increased risks including eclampsia, pre-eclampsia, haemorrhage, obstructed labour, birth asphyxia and long-term injuries such as obstetric fistula.
He argues that compelling a pregnant child to continue a pregnancy despite such foreseeable risks may raise questions about whether the decision is genuinely in the child’s best interests.
“When a child is pregnant and they need to have a high standard of health, what does that mean?” he asks.
That question goes beyond abortion. It asks what the constitutional principle of the child’s best interests actually requires when healthcare, pregnancy, education and long-term wellbeing collide.
The regional human-rights dimension
Mundawarara also places Zimbabwe’s debate within the country’s regional and international obligations.
Her presentation refers to Article 14(2)(c) of the Maputo Protocol, which addresses reproductive rights and calls for access to medical abortion in specified circumstances, including sexual assault, rape, incest and where continuation of a pregnancy endangers the mental or physical health or life of the mother.
She also invokes the Convention on the Rights of the Child’s protection of survival and development, arguing that denying a teenage girl access to appropriate reproductive healthcare can affect not only her health but also her education and future socioeconomic opportunities.
For Rita, the connection is painfully simple. She was preparing for her O Levels when an unwanted pregnancy pushed her towards an unsafe procedure.
Will the law reach the clinic?
The Medical Services Amendment Act gives the Minister of Health powers to develop regulations governing healthcare, including reproductive healthcare, and Mundawarara says this is where the next important step should come.
His presentation calls for the Minister to formulate clinical regulations facilitating reproductive-health services for minors in line with the Medical Services Act. That raises a practical question for Zimbabwe’s health authorities: what guidance will health workers receive on implementing the new law, particularly when a minor seeks reproductive healthcare without a parent or guardian?
Changing legislation does not automatically change what happens in hospitals and clinics.
“Clinicians, managers of hospitals, providers of health services probably don’t read some of these laws,” Mundawarara said.
The courts can determine what the law means and Parliament can change it, but a teenager experiencing an unwanted pregnancy will ultimately encounter the system through a nurse, doctor, counsellor or hospital administrator.
For that teenager, knowing what the law says is only useful if the health system understands it too.
Rita cannot change what happened to her at 16. She remembers seven days of heavy bleeding, the fear that she would die and an experience she says has continued to affect her years later.
Zimbabwe’s legal landscape has changed since then. The courts are reconsidering the rights of pregnant minors, while Parliament has strengthened children’s access to healthcare and placed their best interests at the centre of medical decision-making.
The next test may therefore be less about what the law says on paper and more about what happens when a frightened teenager walks through the clinic door.
For the next 16-year-old who finds herself in Rita’s position, the difference between knowing her rights and being able to exercise them may not be a legal technicality. It may be whether she gets home safely.
