Ligomeka making a presentation during the training[/caption]
Ligomeka added: “We should be celebrating safe motherhood instead of weeping because of maternal deaths caused by unsafe abortions, which can be addressed through reforms already proposed by the government."
Magnitude
Despite current legal restrictions in the outdated provisions of the Penal Code, unsafe abortions are still widespread in Malawi.
The College of Medicine and Guttmacher Institute research findings reveal that over 141,000 abortions happened in Malawi in 2015 alone.
Upon realizing the magnitude of unsafe abortions, the government tasked the Malawi Law Commission to draft the Termination of Pregnancy Bill, which the Commission did.
“It is time the government considered the recommendations that the Law Commission made on abortion law reform because that can contribute to the reduction of maternal deaths,” said COPUA Vice Chairperson Dr. Amos Nyaka.
“We are in a situation where no religion, and no restrictive law have stopped women from procuring abortions when they wish to do so. It seems when a woman decides that she does not want a pregnancy, she does anything to terminate it,” said Dr. Nyaka.
Solutions
Speaking at the same training, a human rights activist, Juliet Sibale, said that once the proposed government law is enacted, women and girls would access the services on four grounds only.
“Once the proposed law is in place, termination of a pregnancy would be permissible, where continued holding of pregnancy will endanger the life of a pregnant woman; where termination is necessary to prevent injury to the physical or mental health of a pregnant woman, where there is severe malformation of a fetus; and where the pregnancy is a result of rape, incest, or defilement,” she said.
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Lawyer and human rights activist Juliet Sibale making a presentation[/caption]
Sibale said the enactment of the new law would reduce maternal deaths as women who meet the criteria would access safe services in hospitals.
“The new law will open an opportunity for women who are raped and girls who are defiled to access services with ease, as the ambiguity of the old law makes it difficult for them to do so now,” she said.
Unlike all its neighbours, like Zimbabwe and Mozambique, which reviewed their abortion laws, Malawi is the only country is southern Africa that is stuck with a colonial law from the 1930s.