Should abortion be legalised or not?

By Rosalia David

WITH the abortion topic being on everyone’s lips recently, I had to use this opportunity to share my take on whether abortion should be legalised or not.

I think we should start by advocating for abstinence from sex before marriage before actually thinking about whether to legalise abortion or not.

But, who am I fooling, reality remains that people are indulging into sexual activities before marriage and it’s almost impossible to convince young people to ‘not have sex’. I mean, teenage pregnancies have been a concern for many years despite the government investing a lot of money in ‘teenage pregnancy campaigns’.

However, whether we like it or not, denying women access to legal abortion does not prevent anyone from having abortions, but just increases the likelihood that they will resort to illegal abortions carried out under unsafe conditions.

I think it will be a step in the right direction to legalise abortion to decrease baby dumping, suicide rates, avoid self-induced trauma and all the other factors that come with an unwanted pregnancy.

According to reports, 500 Namibian women die from abortions every year. Perhaps such should be the news headlines to make Namibians understand that there is a crisis that should be addressed.

The Namibian also reported that then Health Minister Bernard Haufiku tried to highlight the magnitude of the problem when he announced that more than 7 300 women had been treated at public health centres in 2016 due to complications of illegal abortions. In fact, he said the figure could have been as high as 10 000 – or at least 27 cases a day; maybe these statistics should be an awakening alarm for the country to decide to legalise abortion.

I think abortion should be legalised and become a choice for all women.