The scar lingers on

Kenya is ranked second in the world. No, not in athletics or rugby sevens, but in the number of abortions procured — mostly through illegal underground reproduction clinics. We also record the highest number of patients who visit health facilities after developing serious health complications in the wake of an abortion. These are findings carried in the abortion report released last month by Medical Services Director Dr Francis Kimani.

Even as ladies and gentlemen surreptitiously walk around like they have not the tiniest idea of what abortion is, Google, in their Zeitgeist 2012 report pulled the first veil off our faces when they informed all and sundry that the most trending search by Kenyans — in Kenya — in the ‘how to’ category was: “How to procure an abortion”. One of them was a final year student at a prominent public university in Nairobi — let’s call her Doreen Cheptoo.

“I wanted to find out the easiest and safest ways of procuring an abortion; I suspected I was pregnant,” Doreen says. “There is nothing terrifying like going back home to strict parents and telling them about an unexpected pregnancy. When I confirmed the pregnancy and informed my boyfriend, right away, he suggested that we do it since none of us was ready to be a parent in campus.”

With the facts staring at us in the face, two things are true. One, that you (the reader) have procured an abortion, prompted your partner to procure one, knows a Kenyan who has procured an abortion, has been directly involved in one or will be directly involved in one in future. And two; in every abortion case, at least one woman is outrightly involved.

Doreen’s story is drenched with gory details but only until I talk to a married couple — who requested for anonymity. *John Otieno’s wife Alice Wanjiru is among 64.4 per cent of married women or those living with their partners who procured an abortion as contained in Dr Francis’ report. It beggars belief why married couples would be procuring abortion, yet the law is colossal on their rights to reproduce.

Medical expenses

Alice explains: “We have two children and it was not in our plan to have more because children come with expenses — medical expenses, feeding, clothing, education and needs during growth and development. My husband does not have a well-paying job and we are struggling to keep our small and young family afloat… how then would we handle the needs of another human being?”

Citing the cost of life in the overpopulated metropolis that is Nairobi, John has mixed reactions to what he and his wife conspired to do against the life of a developing foetus.

“I feel weird that we had to resort to such an ambivalent tactic to solve our economic rut. But what choices were we left with? Nobody will offer to help with bringing up these children and it terrifies me that if I am not able to raise them with an amount of dignity, they will be absorbed into crime and other crude ways of survival.”

what law says

John surely captures a life graph synonymous with our population demographics but still, is it really fine to procure an abortion? For Daisy Amdany, women’s rights defender and the Executive Director of Crawn Trust, if abortion is done outside the parameters of the law, it can’t be termed right in whichever description.

In her discourse, Daisy opines that the Constitution only allows for abortion when a pregnancy puts a mother’s health in danger. In any other circumstance, it would be illegal and wrong to cut short the life of a growing foetus. She further delves into the crux of the matter, pointing out that abortion and murder are equal if not same.

“Our laws indicate that life begins at conception — which is when fertilisation occurs. It, therefore, goes that if after fertilisation this life is cut short without a reason based on medical analysis, it is plain wrong.”

The effects of abortion, even as it hides amidst our population, are undeniably conspicuous. This is often found out when most casualties are either past the bridge that connects life and death, or are headed there. Even though she survived to tell her story, the scars that *Agnes Yumbya sustained are lignified in her body as well as her life. For the professional bank teller with a local bank, she ended up at a worse place than what she was running away from.

After syphoning out the growing foetus at three months, done by a backstreet medic who used a scissor-like object to accomplish the ‘minor’ operation, it was not long before she woke up in a hospital bed — not able to understand what transpired in the hours before — battling for her dear life. When she was finally discharged and went back to her campus hostel, she thought all was well only to find out three years later (after one year in marriage) that she couldn’t bear a child.

On learning the truth from the couple’s gynaecologist, her husband, feeling betrayed, couldn’t withstand the pangs of his wife lying to him. During that tempestuous time, the marriage cascaded into oblivion leaving her with a frittering soul. So bitter was the husband that he constantly beleaguered her with mordant remarks, something that forced her mind back into the days she committed her “little crime”.

Repercussions

Dealing with post-traumatic stress of going through an abortion is tumultuous, offers Munira Ahmed Jusuf, a clinical psychologist who plies her trade in Westlands Nairobi. “When performing the act, ladies never really think of the repercussions that may follow afterwards. Apart from the obvious physical damage that may occur from procuring an abortion, not many know of post-abortion stress syndrome, which only kicks in after it has been done. You can’t cheat your own mind of what you have done and so guilt will automatically hit you. This is because your mind will be ‘playing’ around with the idea that you are ‘guilty of murder’.

It is a syndrome that Agnes admits to have been a victim of and when the repercussions came flowing like a gush of pungent fart, she had to lose the shame façade and face her troubles vis-à-vis seek professional help. But Agnes is just like the thousands reflected in the report… or maybe a lady who is facing her ordeal now.

“Please think before you do it,” advises Daisy. .

Photo credit:pulsamerica.co.uk