BY RICHARD MUPONDE/ PRECIOUS CHIDA
ZIMBABWE has been urged to legalise abortion to save resources channelled towards treating illegal abortion patients who run to the public health system to save their lives.
Abortion is illegal in Zimbabwe, which is leading many women to opt for backyard surgeries to terminate, resulting in complications which are referred to hospitals where government uses public funds to treat the patients.
Speaking at a gendered corruption in the health sector policy meeting convened by the Transparency International of Zimbabwe on Tuesday, Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Health and Child Care chairperson Ruth Labode said: “It’s factual that in countries where abortion is illegal, safe abortion has frequently been the privilege of the rich, while poor women have little or no choice, but to resort to backstreet abortions, causing morbidity and deaths that becomes the responsibility of the public health system.”
Labode said it was high time that the country legalised abortion to save the burden of the State forking out huge sums of money catering for those who illegally terminate pregnancy.
“These people bleed profusely and they need a lot of blood to stabilise them. Just imagine how much the State has to spend on them to get blood since all these cases end up in public health institutions. As I speak, a pint of blood goes for about US$70. Most people say we can’t allow abortions because they are religious people. Are traditional healers who conduct these abortions not religious people? ” Labode asked rhetorically.
Labode also urged Parliament to expeditiously repeal laws which criminalises the wilful transmission of HIV to a partner, lamenting that women were the most affected by the law.
“That law has, (meanwhile), successfully managed to lock up more women in prisons because of either lack of money for legal representation, lack of understanding or appreciation of the law itself, ” Labode said. Dozens of women are dying yearly due to illegal abortions conducted in backyards as the law criminalises abortion except in cases where a crime has been perpetrated against the victim.
