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Legal abortion remains a struggle for South African women

Johannesburg (dpa) – Almost four years after South Africa legalised
abortion, thousands of women around the country still face an uphill
struggle in their bid to terminate unexpected, unacceptable or unwanted
pregnancies.

Although an estimated 100,000 women have terminated first trimester
pregancies since 1996, it is not unusual for a hospital or clinic designated
for the procedure to deny outright that it offers such a service.

The incidents arise mainly from the religious or moral objections of
healthcare workers combined with a widespread ignorance on the part of
pregnant women about their constitutional rights, abortion lobbyists
say.

Inadequate hospital facilities – almost two-thirds of abortion facilities
are not working properly – and drug shortages have also cheated many
thousands of women of such rights. Illegal backstreet abortions in rural and
urban centres countrywide also continue, health authorities admit.

Only 59 of the 289 abortion centres linked to hospitals and clinics feature
staff trained to perform termination procedures, according to the chief
director for maternal and reproductive health in the health ministry, Eddie
Mhlangu.

Various attempts at changing the negative attitudes of healthcare workers
have yielded little, he says.

“Now I’ve got no friends; no staff, nobody talks to me. I don’t have any
support, I’m victimised,” Refiloe Nonyane, the only nurse at the Groothoek
Hospital near Pietersberg north of Pretoria with any training in abortion
techniques, told parliamentarians recently.

“We still see too many women with incomplete or septic abortions at our
hospitals. These women have been let down by a government which has so far
been unable to translate policy into action,” a nurse from the country’s
Free State province told Deutsche Presse- Agentur dpa.

Many women, especially black women in poverty-stricken rural areas, she
explains, remain unaware of basic information – like the fact that
state-sponsored abortions are legal only up to the end of the first
trimester of a pregnancy and may lack the resources to travel the long
distances to abortion centres.

At the Groote Schuur hospital in Cape Town, of the 2,700 women who applied
for abortions since its legalisation, less than half were deemed eligible
for the procedure.

The hospital had to reject requests from the remainder because their
pregnancies had advanced beyond three months or simply because there were no
beds to accommodate them, according to a hospital representative.

Private abortion centres like the Marie Stopes clinic have since 1996
sprouted around the country, advertising their services on trash cans on
city and township street corners and at universities and other educational
institutions.

However, the cost of an abortion at such centres – ranging between 850 and
950 rand (under 150 dollars) – is beyond the reach of most of the country’s
women.

Dudu (not her real name), a 30-something mother of one recalled how she had
to endure the “knitting needle” method of an illegal abortionist and suffer
heavy bleeding for three days before facing an icy reception at a state
hospital in 1989.

More than ten years later, 28-year-old Lindiwe’s (not her real name)
experience is no different. “I went to the clinic (with abortion facilities)
and they sent me away and scolded me for wanting to kill my baby,” she
said.

Because of the clinic’s refusal to help her “get rid of the child”, Lindiwe
turned to a former midwife in the informal settlement where she lives,
underwent a mysterious procedure involving “a long needle” which has left
her with recurring infections.

Health authorities have embarked on a study to determine the number of
illegal abortions while recent parliamentary hearings on the implementation
of the termination of pregnancy legislation resulted in MPs squabbling over
whether abortion constituted murder.

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