ABORTION AND THE RIGHT TO KILL
The right to life is the first fundamental human right. However, Article 14 on “health and reproductive rights” of the Protocol on the Welfare of Women to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, allows the practice of “abortion on demand.” Dick Cremins, S.J., has worked for many years on family and human life issues. He directs FAMLI, a non-governmental organisation promoting Family Life Values in Lilongwe, Malawi. In this article, he challenges the United Nations promotion of abortion on demand.
At first sight The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa is an admirable document. It sets out in detail all the areas in which the dignity and health of women need to be fully respected and the commitments that States need to make if their countries are to approach the ideal.
The Sections of the Protocol deal with the many areas where women’s rights have still to be fully respected: Discrimination, their Rights to Life, Dignity, and Security, to Participation in the Political Life and Decision-Making, to Education and Training, to Economic Security, Adequate Housing and Sustainable Development. They call for the Elimination of Harmful Practices, for Access to Justice and Equal Protection before the Law, for fair treatment in Marriage, Separation, Divorce, Widowhood and Old Age.
ABORTION AS A HUMAN RIGHT
It is disappointing, then, to find, tucked away in the last lines of Article 14 on Health and Reproductive Rights, that:
“States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to protect the reproductive rights of women by authorising medical abortion in cases of sexual assault, rape, incest, and where the continued pregnancy endangers the mental and physical health of the mother or the life of the mother or the foetus.” (Emphasis added)
This is the classical formula that leads in practice to abortion on demand. We may pass over in silence the in congruency contained in the last few words quoted, the contradiction that a foetus (child) may be killed because continuing the pregnancy might place its (his/her) life in danger. Let us consider how false is the assumption that the mental or physical health of the mother or her very life could be in danger if her child is not aborted.
ABORTION AND MENTAL HEALTH
Although plenty of evidence exists about the damage that abortion often does to a mother’s mental health, further research may be needed to oblige pro-abortionists to look at it. Following this line, a Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives has called on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to get the scientific community to
investigate the link between abortion and depression.
The same request was made by Surgeon General C. Everett Koop back in 1989, without result because the scientific community has not been keen on studies like this. Many advocates of abortion just prefer to assert that abortion does not affect the mother’s mental condition. The Subcommittee’s letter notes that in the past the NIH has not been overly cooperative with Congressional inquiries, saying, “We will not allow the present inquiry to be delayed,” and asking that “the response to this inquiry will be timely and accurate.”
This move on the part of the House Sub-committee was occasioned by a study in New Zealand by Dr. David M. Fergusson. He declared in a radio interview that he was in favour of allowing abortion but thought it important to have as much information about its effects as possible. He studied a group of more than 500 girls from birth to age 25 and found that compared with women who had never had an abortion, women who had aborted were at a higher risk for suicide, major depression, anxiety disorder and drug dependence.
He has also criticised the American Psychological Association for its absolutist stance that there is no link between abortion and mental health and for disregarding the findings of a number of studies that had claimed its negative effects.
ABORTION AND THE LIFE OF THE MOTHER
What about abortion to save the life of the mother? Is it ever necessary? During the ten years from 1970-1979 (inclusive) 21 mothers died during 74,317 births in Dublin’s National Maternity Hospital, which is the largest obstetric unit in Great Britain and Ireland and one of biggest in the world. A study of these deaths concluded that not one of these twenty-one lives could have been saved by an abortion. None of these women died in childbirth because therapeutic abortion was not available.
Although abortion is illegal in Ireland, it has one of the best records in the world for safety in childbirth. Could this be connected with the change in UNICEF’s Report on The State of the World’s Children which increased Ireland’s Maternal Mortality Rate from 2 per 100,000 births in 1996 (the best in the world), to 10 in 1997, reducing the country to tenth place? To reduce maternal deaths Africa needs not more abortion but better health services and more medical skill.
OBLIGATIONS OF SIGNATORIES
However, the U.N. pro-abortionist, feminist lobby has other priorities and has got the “Human Right to Kill One’s Child” recognised for Africa.
“The Protocol will enter into force thirty days after it has been ratified by fifteen states and will oblige other states when they ratify it.” Possibly it could be ratified with a reservation about abortion, which might be a campaign objective for pro-life people in Malawi and Zambia.
States, which ratify the Protocol, commit themselves to see that it is implemented at national level and to take legislative and other measures for the full realisation of the rights described, including abortion rights. The Protocol suggests that this could include amending a country’s constitution and other existing laws, as well as modifying social and cultural patterns of conduct of women and men through public education, information. This will be quite an exercise in the “reformation of the social order”, to borrow a phrase dear to Catholics.
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
In what many will see as a massive contradiction of its own principles, Amnesty International may be about to abandon its neutrality on abortion and to start “actively promoting rights for women to procure abortions.” At the time of writing this article, Amnesty in Great Britain has already adopted a pro-abortion position while the World Body is polling its members on the issue. This looks like a strategic take over of Amnesty International by promoters of abortion, which can only result in splitting the association wide open and damaging its effectiveness in its traditional activities.
Father Joaquin Allied of Aid to the Church in Need has said, "Amnesty International has earned a high reputation for its intensive efforts to gain the release of innocent prisoners of conscience. Now by proposing a pro-abortion initiative it is abandoning its own noble ethical principles, thereby shaking the very foundations on which it is built."
IMPLICATIONS FOR ZAMBIA-MALAWI
These moves create no problem for Zambia where the Termination of Pregnancy (T.O.P) Act was introduced almost overnight with a minimum of protest from the Churches and others who might have been expected to get excited over the violation of the first human right. However, they pressurise countries like Malawi into legalising the killing of children by their mothers. This pressure will be increased by the Family Planning Association of Malawi, which is an affiliate of the International Planned Parenthood Federation and has an expressed policy objective of having abortion legalised.
Here is a challenge to all who are engaged in the Jesuit Social Apostolate, which is about “how people live together in society”, if my memory of its Guidelines serves me right.
WHAT TO DO
If this was a proposal to extend the death penalty for convicted murderers to every country in Africa, we can imagine that human rights activists would soon be up in arms. Are we to remain silent as the death penalty (without trial) is introduced for innocent children? In Malawi will we take steps to prevent ratification of the protocol on this point? In Zambia will we see what can be done to have the T.O.P Act repealed?
Will Jesuits from all over Africa unite in devising a strategy for having the Protocol amended on this point? Or will we maintain our silence?
Dick Cremins, S.J.
Jesuit Community
Lilongwe
This article made reference to:
Culture & Cosmos, February 1, 2006. Culture of Life Foundation, Washington, D.C.; Mr. John Murphy, MD, FRCPI, MRCOG, reported in Irish Medical Journal, September 1982; According to the Personal Update, April 2006,of Family & Life, Dublin, the Rate was 5 in UNFPA’s World Mortality Report: 2005; Quoted in Life Zine #391, Bulletin of Family & Life, Ireland.
