Namibia must protect women and girls seeking abortion care

This past week, we have watched with great interest and hope as a Namibian parliamentary panel on gender equality held its first four days of public hearings on whether to amend its 1975 Abortion and Sterilisation Act.

These historic hearings are the result of years of grassroots activism by Namibian youth and women’s rights groups. The pro-choice movement gained momentum in the second half of 2020, with protests organised throughout the country calling for an end to femicide and sexual and gender-based violence and demanding the repeal of the apartheid-era inherited abortion laws. 

A petition launched by activist Beauty Boois to liberalise abortion in Namibia garnered 62,000 signatures, an unprecedented feat in a conservative society.

Over the last four days, health and rights advocates from the Voices for Choices and Rights Coalition (VCRC), as well as medical doctors and representatives from the ministry of health, have made a case for legalising abortion in Namibia, highlighting the catastrophic health and rights impacts of current legislation. 

As it stands, the law only allows abortion under restrictive conditions, in cases of incest, rape and in acute medical emergencies. Even then, obtaining a legal abortion is so cumbersome that it is rendered practically impossible.

As a result, young girls and women in Namibia who wish to terminate their pregnancy have little choice but to resort to unsafe abortions. Every year, about 500 Namibian women die from these unsafe abortions, accounting for a staggering 12 percent to 16 percent of the country’s maternal deaths. 

In Namibia, as in the rest of the world, criminalising abortion has not brought down abortion rates nor addressed the root causes of unwanted pregnancies. It simply puts the poorest and most disadvantaged women at greater risk of economic and social hardship from unwanted pregnancies and exposes them to medical complications from unsafe abortions. As one activist said at the hearings, “every pregnancy in Namibia should be a wanted pregnancy”.

These hearings are an opportunity for grassroots civil society groups and activists to bring Namibia closer to truly respecting women’s health and reproductive rights. 

We can only hope and strive for the country to follow in the steps of South Africa, Cape Verde and, as of yesterday, Benin, three countries on the continent that have liberalised abortion laws. Of course, these laws are not a panacea for all the problems women face, but they are a crucial and necessary first step.

Beyond Namibia, health and rights activists throughout Africa have strived for decades to abolish many colonial-era inherited authoritarian legislation and advance the protection of the rights and freedoms of all, including vulnerable minorities such as LGBTQI. 

In the last decade, Lesotho, Mozambique, Angola, Botswana and the Seychelles have decriminalised homosexuality. In 2006, South Africa became the first nation on the continent to allow gay marriage.

Over the years, this progressive agenda has been challenged, and efforts are at play to claw back on many of these health and rights advances. 

In a concerning development, the court of appeal in Botswana this month started hearing a government attempt to overturn the landmark 2019 high court decision to decriminalise homosexuality. This judgement, hailed as a major victory for LGBTQI rights in the conservative country, must not be overturned.

In Ghana, a private member’s bill tabled in parliament in August 2021 seeks to introduce some of the harshest anti-LGBTQI laws in Africa. This draft law aims to make it a crime punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, pansexual and non-binary. Advocating for, sympathising with or offering assistance such as financial or medical support to LGBTQI people or organisations would also be an offence punishable by up to 10 years in jail.

While we are encouraged by some of the policy and legislative steps taken at country and regional levels to advance the sexual and reproductive health rights of all people, we have much work ahead of us in challenging the authoritarian and oppressive narrative pushed largely by Christian fundamentalist groups from the United States.  

As women, as activists and as members of African-governed civil society groups, we stand proud and determined and will continue to anchor our activism and advocacy in the principles of empathy, dignity, kindness, understanding and respect – principles that are central to many of our cultural and religious values.

We are endlessly inspired and encouraged by youth activists and the progressive movements taking shape throughout the continent and stand with them in rejecting harmful social and gender norms and intolerance, stigmatization and dehumanisation. We celebrate with people in all their diversity. 

Marie-Evelyne Petrus-Barry is the regional director at the International Planned Parenthood Federation Africa Region (IPPF-AR)

Bience Gawanas has been a human rights lawyer and social development activist for more than 40 years and is an IPPF Board of Trustees member.