Let’s talk abortion Rights Kenya’s stand on abortion

Talking about abortion raises emotions among people, it is viewed by some as wrong and use their moral standings to explain why while others feel it is a basic human right. These two groups always standing on opposite sides giving opinions and justification. However, we need to ask ourselves have we ever considered abortion as a human right? Have we ever asked ourselves how we can protect our women from injuries, disability and even death caused by unsafe abortion? Unsafe abortion plays a big role in maternal mortality in Kenya contributing about 43% of maternal deaths in Kenya. In a bid to decrease maternal mortality caused by unsafe abortion, Kenya unveiled the standards and guidelines for the reduction of morbidity and mortality from unsafe abortion commonly referred to as the post-abortion care guidelines. However, in 2013, the guidelines were withdrawn due to stakeholders disagreeing with some parts of the document. The withdrawal of this document led to an increase in maternal deaths due to unsafe abortion one case study is of JMM who after being defiled sought abortion services but could not have the services since there was no guideline to help the medics. So JMM sought the services from another place. However, the young girl started bleeding heavily and had to seek medical attention. Like many young girls who seek post-abortion services, she turned up late at the facility for medical attention which could not be done unless she went to a level five hospital which could treat her. Unfortunately she was too late and went into shock and had kidney failure which led to her death. This was a young girl whose only mistake was being born female.
Withdrawal of the guidelines cost us promising young women like JMM. Despite being denied safe abortion services we can see that she was still determined to get one. This clearly shows that the legal status of abortion does not reduce the number of induced abortions as women will still seek abortion if they need them. Denying women basic health rights is discriminatory as put across by the opposing team.
It was a happy day when the judge reinstated the guidelines ensuring that women will have access to post abortion care. This will go a long way in ensuring women have access to safe abortion well within the law as well as save women’s lives who needed Post Abortion Care considering that it is an emergency treatment and is meant to save lives. Despite this being a very big progress, we need more proactive methods to prevent maternal mortality and morbidity considering the fact that East Africa has the highest rate of maternal mortality in Africa where 1 in every 5 maternal deaths is caused by unsafe abortion. These statistics should show us that we are losing a lot of women to unsafe abortion. How much do we care for these lives lost to take actual effort to prevent further deaths and injuries?