African Woman and Child Feature Service

If Margaret (24), Salma (18), Miriam (24) and Janet (32) had a choice, they would not have become pregnant in the first place. A fifth testimony of a girl called Sandra was narrated posthumously.  She was 14 years old when she died from the complications of an abortion.

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Salma’s Story

I am 18 years old and I live in Nairobi in my family. I dropped out of school in Form Three because my family could not afford the fees.  My father does not have a regular job, but occasionally finds work selling goats I am the second-born in a family of seven children.  We live with our father and stepmother, whom he married recently.  She is 20 years old and she is a home-maker.  My father divorced my biological mother when I was in class three.

In 2005 when I was 15 years old, I was gang raped to my great horror.  That is how I got pregnant.  I was in Form One at the time and it happened at night as I went to a funeral wake for a class mate. A man had been making cat-calls which I ignored as I hurried to my destination, but he intercepted me at a deserted stretch and was joined by four other men.

When I tried to scream, one of them covered my mouth with his hands while his accomplices wrestled me to the ground and they raped me in turns repeatedly.  I never told anybody about what I went through that night and since then I have a profound hatred of men. 

Two months after the ordeal, I found out that I was pregnant, which deepened my anguish.  In Islamic culture, it is disgraceful for a girl to conceive out of wedlock and my father is a strict practicing Muslim.  I chose to terminate the pregnancyu.

Under the guise of a week-long school trip away from home, I sought out a friend in another neighbourhood and I explained my predicament – especially since I did not have the money to have an abortion.

She advised me on a less costly ‘home remedy’ that involved drinking an undiluted orange juice concentrate or drinking strong black tea to terminate the pregnancy.  The first option did not work, so I boiled three packets of tea leaves in very little water and swallowed the bitter mixture.

It was not long before razor-sharp pains cut through my stomach followed by many hours of heavy bleeding.

I rested at my friend’s home for the next eight days because I dared not go back to my parents in that state. The symptoms got worse and my friend took me to a clinic in the neighbourhood where I received treatment and medication for Ksh 2,500.

When I finally went home, my stepmother noticed that I was unwell, but I lied to her that I had fallen sick during the school trip and had received medication.  I dared not tell her the truth because it would get to my father and he would have killed me.  He has no kind words for girls and women who get pregnant our of wedlock.  Worse still he would have condemned me publicly by revealing the pregnancy and abortion to the worshippers at our Mosque and I would receive their wrath instead of pity. 

I was ill for several weeks after the abortion which I passed off as malaria to the persistent questions of my step mother and siblings.  To this day I have never reported the rape to the police because that would give me away to my parents.  I live in a tight-knit community and my father is well-known in our neighbourhood. 

I really had no choice in this matter.

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The four women shared their testimonies at a Mock Tribunal on Abortion on Tuesday in Nairobi. The event, a first in Kenya, was a partnership of the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) and the Reproductive Health and Rights Alliance (RHRA) to commemorate the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture.  This year’s commemoration is a marked departure from the past where the focus was on the victims and victors over political torture. 

The initial plan for the testifiers to be physically present to share their stories from behind a screen on the podium was hastily revoked when it became apparent that they were targeted for attacks from people who had been sending ominous messages to the organizers of the tribunal in the days preceding the event. 

To circumvent this threat, their voices were taped and aired to the gathering instead. 

However, it can also be said of abortion in Kenya that it is a long-drawn out legal and political power struggle between two camps. 

Those who support the human rights context of reproductive health and rights for women, supporting the right to control one’s reproductive functions including support for access to contraception, abortion, information and services on the one hand. 

And those who criticise the use of the very terms “reproductive choice” or “reproductive rights” especially with reference to abortion because they argue that the framing is an inaccurate and evasive euphemism for death of the unborn. 

Ms Betty Murungi, vice chair of the board of directors KHRC and Executive Director of Urgent Action Fund noted that this was a highly emotive subject in Kenya defined by extreme positions but that it was time to find a common ground to work towards healing the wounds. 

“All the testimonies were from young poor women in vulnerable situations, illustrating the powerlessness of women’s voices,” she said, “Their stories reveal their disadvantaged place within which to negotiate relationships with men.” 

This is a reflection of the climate of unease, intolerance and fear that dogs the abortion debate in Kenya. 

However, although both the pro-life and the pro-choice lobbies held their ground firmly, the two sides were in agreement that it was time to take action against the lack of dialogue and action on abortion that is responsible for the daily deaths and impairment of hundreds of Kenyan women. 

Kenya’s laws make it illegal to procure an abortion unless it is done to save the mother’s life, and even then it must be performed by a doctor registered with the Medical Practitioners and Dentists’ Board. 

It is this prevailing legal climate that is to blame for the many deaths resulting from unsafe abortion. 

A Ministry of Health survey (2005) reveals that 300,000 unsafe abortions are carried out annually, resulting in 2,000 deaths and 20,000 long and short-term injuries including pelvic inflammatory disease, injury to vital organs, infertility and severe haemorrhage. 

Notwithstanding the illegality, the irony is that those who can afford to pay the price will find medical professionals willing to perform abortions in a ‘safe’ environment. 

But for poor women determined to end a pregnancy, the choice is either to turn to back-alley providers or self-induced abortions using crude and dangerous methods. 

Speaking at the Mock Tribunal, Assistant Health Minister, Dr Enock Kibunguchy noted that the consequences of unsafe abortion were a major public health problem in Kenya, citing the high bed-occupancy rates and the post-abortion treatment burden in public hospitals. 

“Poverty and abortion go hand-in-hand,” he said even as he called for expanding the debate to include culture, patriarchy, religion and the courage to face the debate: “We need to find a middle ground to tackle this problem in its totality.”

Consultant gynaecologist, Dr Jean Kagia made the point that unwanted pregnancies were a social problem rather than a medical problem even as she called for sobriety and reason in the debate:  “Remember that sexual assault and rape is an epidemic in Kenya, and the social conditions that cause unwanted pregnancies need to be addressed,” she said. 

Echoing her sentiments, Ms Grace Ojiambo of Crisis Pregnancy Ministries in Nairobi noted the majority of her clients were single women below the age of 25 years. 

“After counseling and support 90 to 95 percent either choose to parent their offspring or to give them up for adoption,” she said, “But a better prevention strategy would be to teach positive sexuality to young people within the family set up and through school based programmes.” 

A common denominator in the five testimonies is the social conditions defining the lives of the testifiers. 

With the exception of Salma whose pregnancy was a result of being gang-raped, they had been sexually active since their early teens. 

They also lived in fear of their parents, the men in their lives and their communities (no discussions on sexuality and no one to turn to for advice); their immediate families suffered varying degrees of distress and all without exception were the children of the poor. 

On the other hand, both Janet and Miriam had been in abusive relationships.  Janet quit school in form two to get married to her husband and Miriam who had three children in quick succession with different men – all of them violent. 

Violence against women has devastating health consequences on its victims and further undermines their control over their own physical and reproductive health.  Statistics point consistently to the fact that most women suffer the violence meted out by their intimate partners. 

The Kenya Demographic and Health Survey (KDHS), 2003 recognises that violence against women increasingly affects women’s health and autonomy with serious consequences for their mental and physical well-being, including their reproductive and sexual health. 

The social and economic background of a girl or woman has a bearing on her chances of experiencing violence.  The KDHS states that over half of all women in their thirties have experienced violence since age 15. 

Another red flag is the violence surrounding young women’s lives and the coercive circumstances in which their sexual encounters take place. 

This was true for Salma, Miriam and Janet.  The KDHS notes that 18 percent of Kenyan women aged 25-49 years had sex before age 15 while more than half had their first sexual encounter by their 18th birthday.

The poorer women tend to initiate sexual activity two years earlier than those who are economically better off. 

Consequences of this include homicide, maternal mortality and HIV/AIDS, poor physical health from injuries, poor mental health, and unwanted pregnancies – the link to abortion. 

Also a disturbing thread in the testimonies was the generational link to the stories of the testifiers’ mothers especially.

Margaret’s single mother died of abortion-related complications, while Miriam’s mother was divorced when her first pregnancy was discovered at age 14. 

Sandra’s mother committed suicide after her daughter’s death. Salma’s mother is not her biological mother, and they share an uneasy relationship, therefore enveloping them in separate cocoons of silence and suspicion.  

Steve Ouma, the Deputy Executive Director at KHRC, noted that in as much as human rights was about dignity and the fullness of humanity, it was also about generational and patriarchal power and the interests of both the pro-life and pro-choice lobbies. 

“These are important issues in determining the direction and voice of the debate,” he added, “Poverty is not natural but one of the worst forms of immorality that has been socially constructed by laws, policies and the forces of politics and globalisation.” 

One of the expected outcomes is that the tribunal will aid in the development of practical and humane responses to the problems of unsafe abortion, and by extension women’s sexual and reproductive health needs and rights. 

The four young women are certainly not proud of the abortions they procured.  They are still haunted by the indignity and near death situations they endured. 

Some of them are living in ill-health many months after the procedure.  They have no guarantees that they will not become pregnant in future – after all they are young and in the peak of their reproductive years and still sexually active. 

How many more women will have to either die or go through life with crippling injuries before the tribunal delivers its verdict on July 18th?