Over 300 000 legal abortions have been performed since the practice was legalised seven years ago, the Christian Democratic Party (CDP) said at an anti-abortion prayer vigil in Braamfontein on Sunday.
The vigil was part of countrywide protests against South Africa’s abortion laws.
About 15 people turned out for the protest held in front of the Constitutional Court.
National special projects director of the CDP, Denise du Plooy, said: ”On February 1, 1997, abortion on demand was legalised in South Africa. It will be recorded in history to have been even more controversial than the apartheid laws of old.”
Du Plooy said the protesters displayed posters ”showing the horrors of the inhumane practice of abortion”, said ”repentant prayers”, read an abortion poem and sang an ”Afrikaans abortion song”.
She said: ”The CDP believes in the Biblical teaching that life starts at conception. We believe that the unborn life is precious and deserves protection by law and not exploitation.
”This South African holocaust of baby murders is even more atrocious than the Jewish holocaust because here we are killing off young unborn people who are not even afforded an opportunity to have a say in their own lives.”
On Saturday, the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) held anti-abortion protest marches in Douglas and Kimberley in the Northern Cape.
ACDP MP Cheryllyn Dudley, who is also a member of the parliamentary health portfolio committee, said: ”While the present government congratulates itself on legislating and implementing the Choice of Termination of Pregnancy Act (1997), 350 000 babies have been mercilessly killed.”
She said the debate around the legality of abortion and the limits within which abortion should still be legal had effectively been ”silenced”.
The ACDP planned to hold another protest in Nelspruit later in February.
Deon van Tonder of Christians for Truth said his organisation protested against abortion at the East Rand Mall in Boksburg on Saturday morning.
He said about 70 people had demonstrated with placards displaying the slogan, ”Abortion kills babies”.
National health spokesperson, Sibani Mngadi, said the act made termination of pregnancy possible for those in need. ”All we are doing is making a choice available to them. It is up to the individual to choose.”
He said there had been a decrease in the number of women presenting at hospitals and clinics with complications from backstreet abortions – Sapa