Choice Ireland

Daily Times
Blantyre
17 November 2011
Suzgo Khunga & Travis Lupick

A recent study conducted by the Ministry of Health’s Reproductive Health Unit (RHU) and NGOs such as the World Health Organization (WHO) has called attention to the dangers of unsafe abortion, describing the practice as a “leading cause of maternal death in Malawi.”

While not all cases of abortion are illegal in Malawi, the report notes that legal abortions are very rare. “Despite this, abortion was extremely common, and was sought for a myriad of reasons,” the report continues. “Nearly everyone asked knew someone who had had an abortion.”Several specific examples were discussed in the report.“

In a village outside Zomba the local chief reported that eight young girls had died of abortion complications in the space of four months,” it states. “Another village chief near Mulanje reported that five girls had died after unsafe abortions during the same time period; in a single month, four abortion-related deaths were recorded at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Blantyre.”

As further evidence, the report cited a recent study that found the rate of abortions in Malawi to be 38 per 1,000 women of reproductive age, compared to the global average of 29 per 1,000.

One of the Millennium Development Goals, of which Malawi is a signatory, is to improve maternal health by reducing maternal mortality by 75 percent by 2015. According to a 2010 report on Malawi and the MDGs produced by the Ministry of Development Planning and Cooperation, 807 women per 100,000 died in child birth. Malawi’s target for 2015 is to reduce that number to 155; however, the government’s progress report states that that goal is “unlikely to be met.”

Reacting to the report, Women and Law in Southern Africa (WLSA Malawi) executive director Seodi White said that the study clearly indicated that abortion is a major contributor to maternal deaths. She argued that the only way to reduce the frequency of such deaths is to legalise abortion.

WLSA Malawi is advocating for the legalization of abortion since in Malawi, abortion is only permitted to save a woman’s life but with the written consent from several doctors and the woman’s spouse.

White said abortion has become a class issue because well-informed women are able to undertake safe abortions at clinics while poor and uneducated women continue to die from complications resulting from unsafe abortions.

“The restrictive legal environment is creating a class divide and the poor young women are dying because they cannot procure safe abortions,” she continued. “If lucky, a woman who accesses an unsafe abortion will go back to work after two weeks; if unlucky, she will be sick for a long time and maybe die.”

The report notes that the most significant barriers to women receiving safe abortions included “restrictive abortion law, inaccessibility of safe abortion services, particularly for poor and young women, and lack of adequate family planning, youth-friendly and post-abortion care services were the most important barriers.”

These barriers, the report states, could be addressed by “abortion law reform; sexuality education and family planning; adolescent sexual and reproductive health services; and post-abortion care services.”

White concurred that enhancing sexual education in schools and increasing access to family planning methods were other ways to reduce deaths from unsafe abortions.

The study analyzed data from 485 “in-depth” interviews with people from all sectors of society and from all areas of the country.