Ambassador Orie Rogo: If he won't 'condom' it, dump him!

    Orie Rogo manduli  talks to Standard during an  interview at her Riverside residence  on 9th June ,2014, Nairobi. PHOTO:JEFF OCHIENG  

Ambassador Orie Rogo Manduli blames men for not using protection to avoid unwanted pregnancies.

“Of course men are to blame. Once they have done their madness without wearing condoms in the first place, what do they expect? Men play around with women’s bodies. A lot of women and girls die in the hands of men who have forced them to abort when they reject the pregnancy,” Manduli told The Nairobian.

Manduli however claims that women also play a role where abortion decisions are concerned.

“I can’t really blame the younger girls, but I really don’t understand why mature women would abort. Don’t they know that choices have consequences? If a man does not want to wear a condom, then why not find another way to prevent the pregnancy?” she posed.

But Maendeleo ya Wanaume chairman Nderitu Njoka blames women, saying most abortions are procured without the knowledge of men and that in any case, it is not a man’s duty to know when a woman can conceive.

“Everyone knows that 90 per cent of children of the world are born when women decide they want a baby. Men are never consulted,” he said.

He also claimed to have conducted a research which showed that 70 per cent of married women have procured one or two abortions because of extramarital affairs.” He added that, “According to our research (which The Nairobian was unable to verify), women don’t want husbands to know about their illicit affairs and therefore decide to abort. They are more scared of DNA tests and so they prefer to abort silently.”

There were other reasons for abortion.

One was lack of access to contraceptives, with casual unprotected sex accounting for a majority abortion by young girls, including teenagers.

Ignorance is another reason as a large number of women, especially in rural areas; don’t understand that contraceptive pills are meant for them and not men.

Strangely, those in the know hardly use them.

Adolescents in Kenya, afraid of the stigma of teenage pregnancy, opted for abortion to save face and stay in school.

Urbanites, on the other hand, cite career and not family goals, as their reason besides having to deal with greater economic expenses that come with an extra, ever-crying mouth to feed.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Kenyans had large families with a household having less than five children being ‘stigmatised’ since eight children and above was the average size of households at the time.

But modern educated women can hardly stand having more than three kids and the average has since fallen to four children per household in Kenya.

Having more kids than one had planned for is the other reason women choose to terminate pregnancies.

Pastor Allan Kiuna of Jubilee Christian Church (JCC) says that abortion is biblically wrong.

“Biblically, it is wrong. A baby should be given an opportunity to live. That is why even we exist. The mother should keep the baby even if it means giving the child up for adoption,” says Kiuna. He insists that regardless of how the baby was conceived, the mother should keep the baby.

The pastor advises women to walk away from men who ask them to abort the child.

“They will not be the first ones to do it. Many single mothers have done it.” As for men who discover that their women have aborted, they should be empathetic with the woman.

“It is always a traumatic experience for the woman. So support her and seek proper guidance and counseling,” he advises.