Both the pro-life and pro-choice viewpoints were forcefully expressed as the abortion issue was discussed in parliament, writes Rehana Rossouw
IT’S BEEN a brutal time for the parliamentary committee listening to public submissions on the abortion issue. Over the past two weeks pro-lifers have assaulted them with bottled foetuses and gory slide shows of abortions and their aftermath.
This week UCT Students For Life representative Shirley Barnes showed the ad hoc committee on abortion and sterilisation what an abortion really looked like. Slide 1 was an aborted foetus thrown into a black rubbish bag. Slide 2, a foetus burnt badly after an abortion using a saline solution. Slide 3, a dismembered foetus after an abortion using suction.
Barnes argued that abortion, under any circumstances, was murder. Not even rape was a justification for an abortion.
“The birth of the baby will be therapeutic for the mother,” she said. “Some good can come out of what was done to her.”
When the students were questioned by committee members, they turned to the Bible to back their case.
ANC MP Sister Bernard Ncube was unimpressed. “How many young girls aged 13 are already pregnant in South Africa?” Sister Bernard asked the students.
“They are not even able to give birth. We have street children in South Africa who are not being adopted by anybody. We need a holistic approach to this problem.”
The response was a quote from the Bible, illustrating that even in his mother’s womb, John the Baptist was aware of the existence of Christ.
While the pro-lifers rely on the Bible to back up their arguments, the pro-choice lobby has been relying on research from countries where abortion is legal.
There are only slight variations on two main arguments being presented: from pro-life that abortion is murder and from pro-choice that it is justified in terms of womens’ control over their bodies.
There has been no shortage of submissions on this hot issue. On Tuesday alone, the committee heard submissions from the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) Womens’ League, the Young Womens’ Network, Students For Life, the National Progressive Primary Health Care Network, Cathi Albertyn of the Centre for Applied Legal Studies at Wits, Doctors Who Support Human Life, the Options Crisis Pregnancy Centre and the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.
Nomfundo Mbuli of the pro-choice Young Womens’ Network, quoting statistics that up to 80 percent of women treated after a botched illegal abortion were younger than 20, said the current law condemned young women and their children to lives of poverty.
“The law has not stopped abortions from happening in South Africa, it has simply made them dangerous,” Mbuli