The Government of National Unity is faced with a litmus test of its commitment to gender rights: whether to change existing abortion legislation for a “freedom of choice” Bill proposed by pro-choice activists, medical and legal
An ad hoc parliamentary committee is considering submissions on abortion from all sectors of the community and the anti-choice lobby is likely to be vociferous. The question is whether the committee will go with public opinion or apply a human rights approach.
The existence of the committee at all is a sign that public opinion on the issue is considered significant. In another human rights issue, capital punishment, public opinion was effectively bypassed when the Constitutional Court was judged the proper place to decide the question.
Although those arguing for the death sentence presented statistics showing that the majority of South Africans supported capital punishment, the court upheld the view that its role was to measure it against the Bill of Rights, and not the vagaries of social mores.
This is not the approach taken here.
Despite a clear pre-election promise to give women the right to choose, the African National Congress has taken the slow committee route, and begun by calling for public input. This is part of the cumbersome consultation process of a Government of National Unity.
We hope that this does not mean the government will allow the morals of some to swamp the rights of others. Even if 90 percent of South Africans condemned abortion, that would leave millions of women without the right to make decisions about their own bodies and their lives.
This right is fundamental. Unplanned pregnancies condemn many women and their children to a life of grinding poverty, from which it is impossible to escape. All over South Africa, single mothers, many of them teenagers, struggle to scrape a living for their families. Although they were not alone in making the children, they bear the burden alone.
Surely it should be their choice whether they can carry this burden, not the choice of their fellow citizens. What can “public opinion” know of each individual woman and the life she will be creating for her child — a life that may contain hunger, cold, abuse, and a lack of opportunity?
This week, a draft Bill was put before the parliamentary committee, proposing that women have the freedom to choose abortion in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy and, under certain conditions, the first 24 weeks.
This matches the policies of three of the four biggest parties in Parliament: the ANC, the Inkatha Freedom Party and the Pan Africanist Congress, excluding only the National and African Christian Democratic parties. (The DP wants its members to vote according to their individual
However, if public opinion turns out to be against abortion and the government kowtows to this, it will be handing the futures of women to an uncertain and unknowing power.
By doing so, it will have sold out half its constituency — and the presence of women in Parliament and the promotion of women to high positions will be so much lip service.