WE CANNOT LEGALISE ABORTION

Sir,

Abortion is not a solution to maternal health. The world’s largest abortion provider, International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), recently acknowledged an alarming ‘surge’ in maternal deaths in South Africa even though that country, since 1996, has had some of the most permissive abortion laws on the African continent.

The majority of maternal deaths and complications are due to lack of basic health care.
It is estimated that 99 per cent of all maternal deaths occur in developing countries.

Comparison

A comparison of abortion laws by country can be found to be strongly suggesting that the real issue surrounding maternal mortality is a lack of basic health care, not the availability of legal abortions.

Local and international NGOs promote legalising abortion as a way to decrease maternal mortality. However, most maternal deaths are due to obstetric complications— including post-partum haemorrhage, infections and prolonged or obstructed labour.

These complications can be largely prevented or treated through quality pre-natal health care. By improving access to and the quality of, pre-natal and post-natal healthcare in developing countries, the number of maternal deaths worldwide could be significantly reduced. In fact, in the past 30 years, maternal mortality has decreased by over one-third across the world.

Few abortion laws have been liberalised during that time and some have even become more restrictive.
What then explains the drastic decrease in maternal mortality over the last three decades?

Under-developed

It resulted from an increase in the availability of basic healthcare to women in under-developed nations, not an increase in the availability of legal (or what they would call ‘safe’) abortions.

Temdzabu Dlamini,
Nhlangano

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