Give women quality health services

Daily Graphic, Pg. 11 Thurs. March 18/10

Story: Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho
UNSAFE abortion is defined as a procedure for termination of unwanted pregnancies either by persons lacking the necessary skills or in an environment lacking minimal medical standards or both.
Health experts say the problem accounts for the country’s high maternal mortality rate, with unsafe abortions accounting for 11 per cent of the country’s maternal mortality rate.
Factors, including harmful socio-cultural practices such as trokosi, widowhood rites, female genital circumcision, women branded as witches, child marriages, stigmatisation of the disabled, among others, work against reducing maternal mortality in the country.
To halt all these negative cultural practises, Ghana has ratified a number of international convention relevant to the realisation of women’s reproductive rights such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, among others.
Also, the government has put in place a lot of domestic legislation and policy frameworks, including the Children’s Act, the National Health Insurance Act, Reproductive Health Policy, Adolescent Reproductive Health Policy, Matrimonial Causes Act, Criminal Code and the Domestic Violence Act to ensure that women make free and informed decisions about issues that affect their reproductive and sexual lives without any fear of coercion, violence or discrimination.
According to a Gynaecologist at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, Dr Ali Samba, most women abort unwanted pregnancies because family planning services are not accessible or affordable.
Dr Samba, who was making a presentation on “Saving women’s lives: The situation of maternal mortality in Ghana and the interventions to address maternal mortality” at a seminar in Accra, said most women in the country ended up having unsafe abortions due to the restrictive abortion laws and policies in the country.
The seminar was organised by the Human Rights Advocacy Centre (HRAC) and the Reducing Maternal Mortality and Mobidity (R3M) Programme in Accra recently on the theme “Saving the organ of creation”. It was aimed at educating students of the University of Ghana, Legon, as part of an advocacy activity aimed at enlightening the students on their reproductive rights.
Partnered by the Centre for Gender Studies and Advocacy (CEGENSA), the seminar also provided a platform for the students to come out on how the economic, social and cultural practices within the country contribute to protecting their reproductive rights.
Dr Samba reiterated his call to make family planning services free, saying women who could not afford the service would rather opt for the free antenatal care services, which were currently being offered in public hospitals as opposed to paying for contraceptive or family planning services.
Nana Oye Lithur, Director of the HRAC, in a presentation, said although abortion, to some extent, was criminal in the country, women rarely reported cases of abortion, neither were they prosecuted for them.
She said between 2002 and 2006, the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit (DOVVSU) of the Ghana Police Service recorded 89 attempted cases of abortion. The same outfit, she said, also recorded 69 cases of abortions within the same period.
According to her, in all circumstances in which abortion is permitted by law, that is when the pregnancy is the result of rape and when the pregnancy poses danger to the health of the pregnant woman, it should be safe, saying that in all cases, women should have access to quality services for the management of complications arising from abortions.
She said the law on abortion in Ghana was stated in the Criminal Offences Act, 1960 (Act 29) Section 58 and 59. She pointed out that although there was no legislative instrument (LI) to back the law, the Ghana Health Service had developed standards and protocols for the prevention and management of unsafe abortion and comprehensive abortion care.