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It is criminal to legalise abortion - Fr Chisanga

It is criminal to legalise abortion - Fr Chisanga
By Inonge Noyoo
Sunday September 23, 2007 [04:00]

CATHOLIC priest Fr Tresphord Chisanga has said abortion should not be legalised because it is criminal. And the Islamic Council of Zambia (ICZ) has said abortion should not be legalised for whatever reasons. But some Lusaka residents have said there is nothing wrong with legalising abortion. Reacting to recommendations by local obstetrics and gynaecology experts that the government should fully legalise abortion to curb the high number of maternal deaths arising from the use of unsafe methods, Fr Chisanga, who is also Bauleni’s St Mathias Mulumba parish priest, said human life must be accepted, respected and protected from the moment of conception to death. He said abortion should not be legalised because it was contrary to society’s moral values.

“Those who are calling for abortion to be legalised should ask themselves one question; what if they were aborted for whatever reasons, would they be around today calling for abortion to be legalised? A human being is sacred and an embryo should be considered as having a right like any other human being,” he said.
Fr Chisanga said human life must be defended in its entirety and cared for and healed as long as it exists.

He said if abortion was legalised, it would become ‘a game’ and people would take advantage of the situation. “It will become a game where everyone just goes to a clinic and they carry out an abortion. This is human life we are talking about, it is not a headache,” he said.

Asked what should be done if a situation arose where the mother had to abort if her life was threatened, Fr Chisanga said he would rather be silent because that would be a moral issue.
He said in any case he would not judge whose life should be terminated.

Fr Chisanga said anyone who participates in terminating life commits a sin. And ICZ spokesperson, Shaban Phiri, said it was not necessary to terminate a life for purposes of poverty or economic hardships.Phiri said legalising abortion would mean people would terminate life for wrong reasons.

He said the Islamic religion only supports termination of life when necessary.

“Abortion can only be an option if the life of the mother is in danger. In this case the known life is preserved and the unknown life terminated. Under such circumstances abortion can be carried out but for any other reasons, be it poverty, its not right to terminate,” said Phiri.

But residents talked to said abortion was rife and the Church should not pretend. Jane Phiri said there were too many ‘back door’ abortions resulting in preventable deaths.

She said it was better to accept that unsafe abortion was rife and many girls were involved.“Let me just tell you that according to my own statistics, four in five women have aborted before.

Most of these women are doing it in an unsafe manner and so many of them are dying. If we have to save our women then we need a more realistic approach than saying it’s a sin. Because whether
it’s a sin or not women are still aborting like no man’s business,” she said.

Another resident Angela Mukondi said people who were saying abortion should not be legalised were hypocrites.

“Of course terminating life or killing a baby as they want to put it is not a good thing. But lets face it the same people who are condemning abortion are the first to rush their grade 12 teenagers to the hospital for abortions,” she said.

“If one was to carry out a survey, you will find that girls are aborting just to continue with school. Some parents don’t even know that their daughters are mothers of four or three aborted babies.”
Mukondi said too many things were going wrong because abortion had been surrounded with secrecy.

At a public discussion on Thursday, UTH obstetrics and gynaecologists Dr Christine Kaseba and Dr Stephen Mupeta called on the government to fully legalise abortion saying it accounted for
30 per cent of maternal deaths that occurred at the UTH last year.
The duo argued that the rise in maternal deaths was as a result of unsafe methods used in the abortions.

Dr Mupeta said currently the Zambian law allowed abortion to be procured by a qualified medical doctor only when the life of the pregnant mother was under threat.

Labels: ABORTION, CATHOLIC CHURCH

posted by MrK @ 4:03 AM