MPs and activists opposed to abortion on Tuesday complained that two-day public hearings in Parliament on the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act (CTOP Act) was biased and excluded those who did not agree with it.
The hearings were arranged by the National Assembly’s health committee and the Reproductive Rights Alliance to check on progress in implementing the law, five years after it came into effect. The committee held similar oversight hearings two years ago.
African Christian Democratic Party MP Cheryllyn Dudley said she had received complaints from anti-abortion activists who were unaware of the hearings, and believed they were therefore one-sided.
However, her complaint was dismissed by committee chairman James Ngculu, who said the committee had placed advertisements in newspapers, and neither he nor the committee secretary had received calls from groups opposed to abortion who wanted to make submissions.
Ngculu also said that MPs should not be apologetic about Parliament adopting pro-choice legislation.
”We are here to celebrate this legislation. For the first time, women, black and white, can choose…”
He also received a letter from the Christian activist organisation, United Christian Action, saying the hearings could not be termed national because those opposed to abortion were not consulted or invited to make presentations.
Problems with implementation raised by several speakers on Tuesday were exactly the same as those raised in the public hearings two years ago, indicating that little progress had been made in resolving them.
The issue of conscientious objections by health workers was again raised as an impediment to women exercising their rights in terms of the law.
Michelle O’ Sullivan of the Women’s Legal Centre called for a code of good practice on how to deal with patients’ rights and termination of pregnancies.
O’ Sullivan said that while health workers had the right to freedom of conscience this was not absolute in terms of the Constitution. Although they could not be forced to perform an abortion in a situation which was not life-threatening, they were in law obliged to provide information that would allow women to exercise their rights in terms of the CTOP Act.
Several practitioners and academics, including Dr Ames Dhai of the University of Natal, told MPs that unsafe abortions were still occurring. She also called on the medical profession to fulfill its responsibilities in the face of increasingly small numbers of health professionals willing to perform an abortion.
It was an ethical imperative that health professionals were made aware of the limitation of their rights with respect to providing information and deterring access to services, Dhai said.
Education on ethical and legal issues concerning termination of pregnancies should also be required in undergraduate curricula of doctors and midwives.
Chris Hani/Baragwanath Hospital-based researcher Dr Heather Brown presented her findings based on an investigation she conducted in 2000 on the number of illegal and unsafe abortions in the country. She said there had been a decrease in the number of unsafe abortions. However, unsafe and illegal abortions were still occurring.
Researchers in Gauteng had interviewed 151 women, of which a third had confided that they had induced themselves.
”These women were generally older, less educated and had more children already at home…”
Only 39% of them had used contraception, she added.
Among reasons given for opting to induce themselves was that hospital staff had been rude and uncooperative when a legal termination had been sought. The hearings continue. – Sapa