AFRO-NETS> Experts meeting on unsafe abortion in Africa oppose Global Gag Rule

[Merrill Wolf <WolfM@ipas.org>]

Experts meeting on unsafe abortion in Africa oppose Global Gag Rule
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African health leaders, lawyers, women's advocates call for action to 
save women's lives from unsafe abortion 

Participants in Africa's first regional consultation on unsafe abor-
tion speak out against the Global Gag Rule, saying it impedes efforts 
to reduce unwanted pregnancy and unsafe abortion.

March 17, 2003 - More than 100 African leaders from 15 countries who 
attended the continent's first regional conference on unsafe abortion 
concluded deliberations in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, March 7 with a 
strong call for action to address this global public-health problem. 
Unsafe abortion results in the deaths of about 30,000 African women 
every year, according to the World Health Organization.

The multidisciplinary group of experts attending the "Action to Re-
duce Maternal Mortality in Africa" conference included health minis-
ters, parliamentarians, health-care professionals, women's advocates, 
lawyers and others. They called on African governments to uphold com-
mitments under numerous international agreements to address unsafe 
abortion effectively, including by increasing the availability of in-
formation and services to help prevent unwanted pregnancy and by mak-
ing safe abortion available to the full extent of local and national 
laws. Participants committed themselves to educate the full spectrum 
of stakeholders affected by unsafe abortion about its tragic, pre-
ventable impact and to work more effectively within existing legisla-
tion and health systems to make high-quality, comprehensive reproduc-
tive-health care universally available. 

"The primary interest of everyone involved in this conference is to 
save women's lives from unsafe abortion - something we know how to do 
but for which the global community has lacked political will," said 
Dr. Eunice Brookman-Amissah, a former Minister of Health of Ghana who 
now heads the Ipas Africa Alliance for Women's Reproductive Health 
and Rights. Along with several other organizations, the Ipas Africa 
Alliance co-sponsored the conference.

"No one wants to promote abortion," she continued. "It's true that 
liberalization of abortion laws has been shown to reduce maternal 
mortality, but the immediate priority is not always to legalize abor-
tion. It is instead to make safe services available to the full ex-
tent of existing laws." 

Brookman-Amissah noted that every African country permits abortion in 
some circumstances but that women rarely have access to care to which 
they are legally entitled. "That is why so many women and girls are 
maimed or die," she said. 

Participants also called on African governments and the global commu-
nity to be accountable to citizens and other stakeholders by opposing 
the Global Gag Rule imposed in January 2001 by the administration of 
U.S. President George W. Bush. This policy disqualifies nongovernmen-
tal organizations outside the United States from receiving U.S. fam-
ily planning funding if they provide counseling on abortion, provide 
legal abortion services except in very narrow circumstances, or par-
ticipate in political debate surrounding abortion. 

"By reducing funds available for preventive family planning, the 
Global Gag Rule clearly impedes efforts to reduce unsafe abortion," 
said Brookman-Amissah. "Contrary to its stated intentions, the policy 
results in more unwanted pregnancies, more unsafe abortions, and more 
deaths of women and girls. We who have seen those effects first-hand 
can no longer tolerate silence about the gag rule's tragic effects." 

Conference participants decried the lack of attention to reproductive 
health in general and to unsafe abortion in particular in programs to 
achieve the Millennium Development Goals, which United Nations member 
nations adopted in 2000. "Maternal mortality cannot and will not be 
reduced by 75 percent by 2015, nor will goals related to poverty re-
duction and economic development be achieved, without attention to 
unsafe abortion," Brookman-Amissah said. 

For more information, contact: 
Merrill Wolf 
Senior Advisor, External Communications 
Tel: +1-919-960-5612
mailto:wolfm@ipas.org
http://www.ipas.org/

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