African health leaders, lawyers, women's advocates call for action to save women's lives from unsafe abortion

Participants in Africa's first regional consultation on unsafe abortion speak out against the Global Gag Rule, saying it impedes efforts to reduce unwanted pregnancy and unsafe abortion.

March 17, 2003 - More than 100 African leaders from 15 countries who attended the continent's first regional conference on unsafe abortion concluded deliberations in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, March 7 with a strong call for action to address this global public-health problem. Unsafe abortion results in the deaths of about 30,000 African women every year, according to the World Health Organization.

The multidisciplinary group of experts attending the "Action to Reduce Maternal Mortality in Africa" conference included health ministers, parliamentarians, health-care professionals, women's advocates, lawyers and others. They called on African governments to uphold commitments under numerous international agreements to address unsafe abortion effectively, including by increasing the availability of information and services to help prevent unwanted pregnancy and by making safe abortion available to the full extent of local and national laws. Participants committed themselves to educate the full spectrum of stakeholders affected by unsafe abortion about its tragic, preventable impact and to work more effectively within existing legislation and health systems to make high-quality, comprehensive reproductive-health care universally available.

"The primary interest of everyone involved in this conference is to save women's lives from unsafe abortion - something we know how to do but for which the global community has lacked political will," said Dr. Eunice Brookman-Amissah, a former Minister of Health of Ghana who now heads the Ipas Africa Alliance for Women's Reproductive Health and Rights. Along with several other organizations, the Ipas Africa Alliance co-sponsored the conference.

"No one wants to promote abortion," she continued. "It's true that liberalization of abortion laws has been shown to reduce maternal mortality, but the immediate priority is not always to legalize abortion. It is instead to make safe services available to the full extent of existing laws."

Brookman-Amissah noted that every African country permits abortion in some circumstances but that women rarely have access to care to which they are legally entitled. "That is why so many women and girls are maimed or die," she said.

Participants also called on African governments and the global community to be accountable to citizens and other stakeholders by opposing the Global Gag Rule imposed in January 2001 by the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush. This policy disqualifies nongovernmental organizations outside the United States from receiving U.S. family planning funding if they provide counseling on abortion, provide legal abortion services except in very narrow circumstances, or participate in political debate surrounding abortion.

"By reducing funds available for preventive family planning, the Global Gag Rule clearly impedes efforts to reduce unsafe abortion," said Brookman-Amissah. "Contrary to its stated intentions, the policy results in more unwanted pregnancies, more unsafe abortions, and more deaths of women and girls. We who have seen those effects first-hand can no longer tolerate silence about the gag rule's tragic effects."

Conference participants decried the lack of attention to reproductive health in general and to unsafe abortion in particular in programs to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, which United Nations member nations adopted in 2000. "Maternal mortality cannot and will not be reduced by 75 percent by 2015, nor will goals related to poverty reduction and economic development be achieved, without attention to unsafe abortion," Brookman-Amissah said.

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