BY LUCY MILLIAS
The heart breaking news of baby-dumping in a school latrine by a secondary school girl in Kasungu, has exposed the wide spread act of dumping babies in toilets and other unhealthy places by young women and girls across the country.
Maternal Health Experts attribute this behaviour to an increased rate of unplanned pregnancies amid low usage of contraceptives, and the criminalization of abortion acts in the country.
Under the Malawi abortion law adopted in 1964 from the British government- it’s former colony , abortion is illegal and offenders are convicted up to 14 years of imprisonment with hard labour.
But myths surrounding the use of contraceptives and cultural beliefs influence most girls to engage in unsafe sex and get “unplanned” pregnancies in the end.
For instance, the Kasungu girl, name withheld, concealed her pregnancy until delivery time.
“On her delivery day, she went to school as usual and attended classes for some hours. Then, she started feeling strange abnormal pains and went to the toilet where she delivered a baby girl and dumped her in the latrine,” said Eliza Kachali who witnessed the incident.
Eliza says the baby that was crying in the latrine was discovered by another girl who wanted to relieve herself in the same toilet.
The baby was lucky to be rescued and alive.
But the police in the district admit that such babies die in the unhealthy environment they are thrown into within a short period, and that such cases are not commonly reported to police in good time because the perpetrators fear of being arrested.
Emma Kaliya, a gender and abortion activist, strongly believes such cases can be reduced if government legalises safe abortions in the country. Such laws will help reduce baby dumping, serious complications and deaths emanating from unsafe abortion.
She further argues that “If we want to deal with this problem, let’s allow women and girls to have safe abortions”, otherwise we will continue experiencing baby dumping cases and many abortion related deaths year in year out.
The sad story is that last month, the law markers unanimously rejected a motion to debate the long-delayed Termination of Pregnancy Bill. The Bill is being pushed by pro-abortion activists on one hand, and on the other hand, anti-abortion activists mainly led by conservative and religious groups who consider all abortions to be murder.
Not withstanding rejection from the parliamentarians “We still want to see government pushing for the passing of the abortion bill into law and implement it if we are committed to save lives of girls and women, and tackle maternal related deaths and complications in Malawi,” she told the Citizen Eye.
Her sentiments are backed by a research conducted by the Guttmacher Institute in collaboration with the University of Malawi College of Medicine that indicates about 141 000 abortions performed yearly are mostly considered as being unsafe.
The research findings further indicates that about 60 percent of the abortion victims develop or die of related complications in their homes for fear of being arrested or stigmatized by their communities if they expose themselves to the public.
Furthermore, we also found out that most of the girls use dangerous concoctions from witch doctors or objects such as cassava stems, wires or a mixture of drugs to carry out an abortion due to lack of access to safe abortion.
Despite the criminalization of abortion in the country, the government provides post abortion care services in it’s hospitals and it spends about K248 million ($314 000) on treatment of such cases annually.
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