Sunday, February 22, 2009              

Abortion? Please Count Me Out

Sir: The Country Representative for IPAS, Dr. Ejike Orji has been going round saying that Nigerian women have agreed to legalise abortion.

I am a Nigerian woman. I don't support abortion for any reason. I have many friends who are Nigerian women and they too do not support abortion. So where does Dr. Orji place us? Are we Nigerian men? Dr. Orji must be telling lies. We have not agreed to legalise abortion. Abortion cannot be legalised in Nigeria. When Senator Daisy Danjuma brought a bill to legalise abortion in 2006 that bill failed because Nigeria is not ready to legalise abortion. So where did Dr. Orji get his information?

If Dr. Orji had a meeting with pro-abortion feminists who share his interests however, he cannot equate them to Nigerian women because they are not true representatives of Nigerian women. Nigerian women abhor abortion. They are mothers or potential mothers not murderers. When did we start accepting the killing of our babies as the most natural thing? Ours is a culture that respects the sacredness of human life-born and unborn.

Nigerian women love children and want to have many children. Even Allen Gutmacher, another pro-abortion activist, admits that much. Murder is murder. It is intrinsically evil and a crime against humanity. The argument that abortion is now commonplace and therefore should be legalised does not hold water at all. Are we saying that since armed robbery and kidnapping are rampant in Nigeria, we should legalise them?

Everyone knows that high maternal death in Nigeria is not due to lack of access to abortion clinics, high maternal death in Nigeria is caused by poor health service delivery system, ignorance, negligence and poverty. In fact, absent or inadequate emergency obstetric care for women during delivery and immediate post-delivery, has been identified as the single most important fact why women die during child birth.

Countries like USA, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, etc which legalized abortion have realised its destructive effects on family and social life. They have seen that legalised abortion has not reduced the deaths caused by induced abortion among their women. Hence they are now making frantic efforts to repeal their abortion laws. Abortion causes breast cancer. In 2008, many of my friends travelled to India to be hospitalized for breast cancer. Some were young ladies who were sleeping around when they were younger who later started suffering from breast cancer.

So fellow women, abortion turns women into objects to be used and discarded. It breeds a culture of contempt for women, contempt for the family, contempt for the value of human life and contempt for child-bearing. Do not be deceived. Say no to abortion.

*Uju Akosa,

Enugu, Enugu State.