Sierra Leone could become the second country in West Africa to decriminalize abortion. Health workers say it would significantly improve the safety of pregnant women and decrease the number of preventable deaths.
A simple bench and makeshift nurse’s station have transformed an abandoned building into a temporary clinic in rural Njagbahun, Sierra Leone.
Marie Stopes International operates free family planning services to those in hard-to-reach areas.
Working by the light filtering through a curtained doorway, nurses provide “post-abortion care” and distribute contraception.
Mariama Soriba, 25, peeled off from the local market, in need of the birth control implant.
“I’ve come for the family planning service so I can space out my children,” she said.
Safe Motherhood Bill
Women’s reproductive rights are up to be widely expanded in Sierra Leone as lawmakers debate the Safe Motherhood Bill, which would legalise abortion and give wider access to family planning and reproductive health services.
Government officials have called the bill a necessary response to the reality of high numbers of deaths among pregnant women, particularly from botched abortions.
When she got pregnant at 16, Fatou Esther Jusu was terrified that it would derail her future.
Fearing judgment from her family, she took friends’ advice and bought misoprostol, a drug whose uses include abortion from a local pharmacy.
It didn’t work. Desperate, she tried again and miscarried.
Over 20% of girls between 15 and 19 in Sierra Leone get pregnant, according to the U.N. Population Fund is one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in the world.
Now 21, Jusu considers herself lucky.
One friend died after taking an expired version of the medication.
With those experiences in mind, the nursing student is mobilizing others in support of the bill that would decriminalize abortion in the West African country.
“This gave me the cause to focus my education, my activism on SRH (sexual reproductive health) issues because I have been a victim, I don’t want other girls to be a victim of it,” Jusu said.
Colonial-era Law.
The country could become the second nation in West Africa to decriminalize abortion, which health workers say would significantly improve the safety of pregnant women, decrease the number of preventable deaths and bring an end to the current colonial-era law.
Tens of thousands of women and girls attempt to self-terminate their pregnancies every year in Sierra Leone, where abortion is illegal in all circumstances.
Supporters of the bill say unsafe abortions account for around 10% of maternal deaths. Healthcare workers are known to perform terminating procedures when the situation is “incompatible with life” of the woman, usually in the case of “incomplete” abortions. Because abortion is illegal, they cite other reasons for the termination.
Sierra Leone’s President Julius Maada Bio pointedly introduced the Safe Motherhood Bill after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, stripping away women’s constitutional protections for abortion.
If approved, the bill would have been West Africa’s most progressive legislation on abortion, allowing the procedure for up to 14 weeks.
But Sierra Leone since then has been torn apart by debate.
Following opposition from religious leaders, the bill has been amended and now limits abortion to cases of life-threatening risk, fatal foetal abnormalities, rape or incest.
An estimated 90,000 abortions are performed annually in Sierra Leone, a country of more than eight million people, according to research by the African Population and Health Research Centre.
About 10% of the country’s maternal deaths — affecting 717 of every 100,000 births — are due to unsafe abortions, the centre said.
Health workers say the true number is likely much higher.
Africanews/Shakirat Sadiq
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