RELIGION BULLETIN-SOUTH AFRICA: Christian Group Challenges Pro- Choice Law

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Gumisai Mutume

JOHANNESBURG, May 24 1998 (IPS) - A Christian coalition has opened fire on South Africa’s Termination of Pregnancy Act in a case that pits it against the state and human rights groups.

Come Monday, The Christian Lawyers Associatin, Christians for Truth and United Christian Action will challenge the act in the High Court. They claim that the law, which came into effect in 1996 and gives women the right to have abortions, violates the Constitution and the foetus’ right to life.

They are opposed by the national minister of health, the premier of Gauteng province, the province’s health minister, the Reproductive Rights Alliance and the Commission on Gender Equality.

“I don’t think women can claim for gender equality when they are not willing to grant equality to others,” says Reg Joubert who is representing the coalition. “What is the basis of our constitution guaranteeing equality of all if we are going to decide who are ‘people’ and who are not?

“Rights are balanced against each other. The constitution has already ruled that the right to life is the ultimate.”

For the Christian coalition, life begins at conception. However pro-choice advocates argue that the decision to continue or terminate a pregnancy has profound economic, personal and social consequences for women. The right to choose, they say, is a fundamental one for women.

Before the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act was passed, about 2,000 legal abortions were carried out each year in South Africa, while another 5,000 women travelled overseas to have their abortions done.

The majority of women, usually black, who were denied the option of legally terminating their pregnancies resorted to back- street abortions. Estimates put the figure of illegal abortions at more than 200,000 a year before the Act was passed.

“Back-street abortions are conducted in various ways, sometimes a catheter or foreign object is used through a woman’s cervix into a womb,” says Gloria Mokoena who works at one of the legal abortion clinics, Marie Stopes. “These methods cause bleeding which usually results in abortion.”

Infections are common, can lead to permanent damage and may prevent a woman from having children in future. Severe infections can lead to death.

During the first year of the Act’s passage, more than 26,000 abortions were carried out legally in the country, nearly 50 percent of them in Gauteng, the province that includes Johannesburg and the capital, Pretoria.

The Act allows termination of pregnancy on request during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. On specified grounds it allows it up to 20 weeks and, beyond that time, only exceptional medical cases are considered.

“To give a foetus rights in opposition to women denies women their rights,” says Cathi Albertyn of the Reproductive Rights Alliance. “Even then, if one does not accord foetal rights to a foetus it does not mean its interests are not being observed.”

Albertyn says by choosing whether to continue with her pregnancy or not, a woman is exercising a constitutional right to freedom and securit of her person and control of her body. This dignifies women and accords them respect as moral and autonomous beings.

If the Christian group is successful, the act will be struck down and women will not have access to legal abortions, not only in Gauteng, where the legal challenge is being lodged, but nationally.

“The consequences, I guess, will be that hospitals will no longer be able to abort, and we will be back to illegal abortions,” says Albertyn.

“But legalising abortions is not going to stop illegal abortions,” counters Father Hyacinth Ewn of the Catholic Church, who says his church will give moral support to the coalition.

Ewn says he bases his argument against abortion on three principles, the right to life, to human dignity, and to freedom from cruel and inhumane treatment — the same principles used by the Courts to abolish the death penalty in 1995.

“Abortion is an unfair treatment of people (foetuses) who should be protected by the law,” says Ewn.

In order to win its case, the Christian group must prove that the foetus does have constitutional rights and that there is no other method of protecting potential life. Only in Germany and Ireland is foetuses’ right to life constitutional.

“To accord this status to a foetus cannot be contemplated by our Constitution which seeks to advance gender equality and redress poverty and disadvantage,” notes Albertyn. “It would diminish women’s human rights to an unacceptable degree and render women vulnerable to indignity and physical danger of the back street.”

On the other hand, Joubert argues that what society should do is not seek quick solutions but deal with the problems that cause so many people to resort to abortion.