By Zadie Neufville
KINGSTON, Aug 21 2001 (IPS)

Faced with possible life imprisonment for terminating their pregnancies, Jamaican women resort to dangerous – and sometimes deadly – methods of abortion.

Some of the practices persist despite attempts to educate the public about their harmful effects and others take root because they appear safe.

In the former category, many desperate teens resort to a concoction of aspirin, heated Pepsi Cola and rusted nails, according to the World Health Organisation. Others seek out the local medicine woman for her ‘black pot’ brewed cocktail of sometimes-lethal bush remedies.

The newest methods, however, belong to the latter category: ones that appear safe because they involve prescription drugs – but are, in fact, deadly. These include misoprostol, taken at up to four times the recommended dosage, says gynaecologist Errol Daley.

Women may believe these methods to be safe and effective at inducing contractions but “it is a dangerous practice,” says Daley, a vice president of the Medical Association of Jamaica (MAJ).

Dangerous though they may be, these options effectively are the only ones open to Jamaican women, say critics of the 137-year-old law, inherited from British colonial days, that criminalises abortions and threatens the women who have them – as well as the doctors who help them – with up to life in prison.

Successive Jamaican governments have failed to amend the law even though Britain itself has since passed an abortion act consistent with United Nations provisions on the rights of women, says Carolyn Surland, an attorney at law.

Olivia McDonald, medical director at the National Family Planning Association (NFPA), says Jamaican doctors are operating in “an environment that makes would-be criminals” of those trying to preserve and save life.

“Where there is a life-threatening emergency there is no place for even conscientious objectors. It seems to me that there is an urgent need to decriminalise abortions,” McDonald says.

Doctors’ refusal to carry out abortions has served to push up the costs of medically supervised pregnancy termination and to force women to seek home remedies.

Cherice Palmer says a friend of hers paid close to 150 dollars for an abortion more than four years ago – a bill many of the poorest would find difficult to afford even today. But a few dollars spent in the back streets of downtown Kingston can procure enough misoprostol to offer a 25-40 percent chance of abortion depending on how the drug is taken.

Daley says misoprostol is used in clinical studies to induce labour, but is administered in small dosages of 50 microgrammes. Despite its apparent effectiveness as an abortion aid, he warns, the drug can cause serious side effects and result in incomplete abortions and septic pregnancies – which can lead to death. Other complications can rob women of their ability to reproduce.

The Latin American and Caribbean Women’s Health Network estimates that six thousand in the region die every year due to abortion- related complications. Jamaica has no official figures because authorities “look the other way”, Daley says. Admitting that the problem exists would mean having to fix it and no government is willing to do deal with abortions, he adds.

Not so, says Deana Ashley, Jamaica’s acting chief medical officer.

Come October, Ashley says, the health ministry will begin to look at the issues surrounding abortions, “but right now our attention is focused on AIDS and all the issues surrounding the disease”.

According to officials, it is a matter of setting priorities because resources are scarce.

Time may not be a luxury anyone can afford. According to McDonald, between one and five of every ten women who undergo unsafe abortions need medical attention for serious side effects including pelvic inflammatory disease and infertility.

Meanwhile, however, the illegal status of abortions means that none of the local women’s groups are willing to offer counseling – at least not officially, since those that do offer advice don’t publicise this – meaning that women don’t know about them.

The Crises Centre run by Woman Incorporated, a group that offers assistance to battered women, does not offer referrals or counseling on abortion. “We will not turn away someone who needs abortion counseling, but we do not offer the service,” one counselor says, speaking on condition of anonymity.

But with as many as one in five pregnancies being terminated anyway, Daley says, abortion counseling is a necessity.

The MAJ launched a campaign last year to amend the existing abortion law to provide recourse for women whose pregnancies result from rape or incest.

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