The head of Kenya’s medical association has urged doctors to protest at the murder trial of a gynaecologist accused of carrying out abortions.
When John Nyamu goes on trial next week it will provoke a split in his profession between colleagues who regard him as a martyr and other doctors who back the prosecution.
Stephen Ochiel, chairperson of the Kenya Medical Association, has criticised the decision to charge Dr Nyamu with murder — which carries the death penalty in Kenya — rather than procuring abortion, which is punishable with a jail term. He called on colleagues to attend a rally at Nairobi high court, dressed in white medical coats and wearing stethoscopes.
They have also been asked to contribute to a defence fund for the gynaecologist, who was arrested in June after the discovery of 15 foetuses dumped in refuse bags.
Dr Ochiel said: ”There’s a penal code on abortion. That would have been the right charge, not murder.
”Murder brings a death sentence, if found guilty, and the trial could take years in our court system … we are destroying Dr Nyamu. Even if he is found not guilty after three years we will have destroyed him as a person.”
Ochiel said the law on abortion, which is banned even in cases of rape or incest, is driving women to ”back street” clinics. ”Women are coming to us after attempting to procure abortions. When they present themselves to us they are too sick, and they die.
”Far too many women are dying from this cause and society needs to examine itself.”
Nyamu, who ran two reproductive health clinics in the Kenyan capital, was arrested along with two nurses in June. The three have been charged with murdering two foetuses, a boy and girl.
Reflecting the split over the issue in Kenyan society, Ochiel has come under attack from two leading gynaecologists, who urged him to withdraw the letters and apologise to the association’s membership.
Stephen Karanja and Jean Kagia, who are members of an anti-abortion movement, said in a statement: ”If [doctors are] alleged to have committed a crime they must, like any other Kenyan, be vigorously prosecuted. The position taken by Dr Ochiel is unacceptable … it will disgrace the profession and bring it to disrepute.”
The discovery of the dumped foetuses triggered a national debate in Kenya, where an estimated 20 000 women are admitted to hospital each year to be treated for complications following ”back street” abortions. A study by a Unied States charity, Ipas, indicated that 2 600 Kenyan women die each year because of post-abortion complications.
Last year Kenyan women MPs called for abortion to be legalised, saying the major reason that women resorted to terminations was because men were not required to pay for the upkeep of children fathered outside wedlock.
For many women, the MPs said, abortion was the only means of preventing their existing children sinking further into poverty.
Public opinion in Kenya is broadly anti-abortion. A requiem mass held for the 15 foetuses drew a crowd of thousands this summer, and the letters pages of newspapers have been filled with condemnation of the alleged abortionists, as well as the mothers of the foetuses.
The head of Kenya’s Catholic church, Archbishop Ndingi Mwana a’Nzeki, has vowed to mobilise the faithful to ”vote out politicians who support abortion”. But newspaper editorials have called for a debate on legalisation, and a former attorney general, Charles Njonjo, has called for the ban to be lifted.
In Africa only Tunisia, Cape Verde and South Africa provide abortions on request, during the first trimester of pregnancy. – Guardian Unlimited Â