We must legalise abortion: Tendai Biti

Former Minister of Finance and lawyer Tendai Biti has urged the government to legalise abortion. Biti said that under the current laws, thousands of grils and women were dying as a result of illegal abortions. Biti said this when he was being given an award for successfully challenging child marriages.

Said Biti:

So, there are hundreds of girls that are dying because of illegal abortions. The Termination of Pregnancy Act in Zimbabwe is terrible. Those with money just go to South Africa to those clinics, it’s very cheap anyway, because it is subsidised by the State. For the rich and the middle-class, abortion is one hour away, but not for the majority of our young girls in this country and it’s endemic.

The government needs to repeal the Termination of Pregnancy Act and remove other barriers to accessing safe reproductive health services for women and allow women to take responsibility of their reproductive health . . . If we have to be equal like we did in the (Loveness) Mudzuru case (the child marriages case), one of the things that we have to do is to democratise the right of access to abortion.

The Zimbabwe Doctors for Human Rights has also made a similar call in the past.

More: NewsDay