A broken promise

Editorial
Stabroek News
September 16, 1999


When abortion reform legislation was successfully piloted through the National Assembly in May of 1995 via a conscience vote it was with the deepest understanding that it was a gingerly taken step on the first rung of a winding ladder.

Because of its tremendous implications for women's reproductive health and the highly emotive religious and moral issues which flared up around it, the law and its application required eagle-eyed scrutiny by all in society, not only the government and its appointees.

More than four years later, the extensive consultations and vigorous debate that propelled the legislation have died away in the firm clutch of a highly secretive board that is supposed to oversee the law. In a way, those who gave freely of their views in the build up to the passage of the law have found that they are in possession of a one-way ticket instead of the promised return trip. They have been misled.

The rationale for the existence of the law was whether the decriminalisation of abortions would reduce the number of back-street operations that ended up maiming or killing women, whether in bringing the issue to the fore the number of unplanned pregnancies terminated through abortions could be lowered and generally improving reproductive health care offered to women.

The Abortion Advisory Board was established in 1996 as the matrix through which these varied questions and collateral issues could be answered. Three years was a sufficiently long period to test some of the assumptions of the law and make the necessary modifications. It would also permit the creation of a data base for longer-term assessment of the implications of the law.

To date, the board has not presented to the public any credible body of data to satisfy arguments for or against the abortion reform law.

Moreover, in the three years it has been in place, there has been no report on whether it has met its obligations under the law. Only one press release has been issued.

What is known is that there has been a marked decrease in the number of incomplete or botched abortions which have been treated by recognized medical institutions and a decline in related fatalities. This probably reflects easier access to abortion services than before the law.

It is not possible to gauge the trend in the number of abortions performed because of the lack of a data base.

Only a portion of the doctors who should be reporting on abortions are doing so at the moment so even the board is not in a position to comment definitively. The counselling requirements and robust family life education have also fallen by the wayside.

What the government must realise is that the advisory board is far more than an adjunct to the law. It is the enforcer and examiner of the law. If the board is not fully empowered, the impact of the law will not be known and worse its unremedied defects can cause its collapse. On a daily basis, there are flagrant transgressions of the law without sanctions being applied and this must be stopped.

Last week, Stabroek News carried excerpts from a letter by a member of the board, Reverend Wilfred Ledra, to its chairman Frederick Cox in which he expressed his dissatisfaction with the functioning of the board and threatening to resign. Among other things, Ledra said "the board for too long has been working in apparent secrecy. This has led to all kinds of criticisms; some justified, some unjustified. The board must begin to listen to the public". We concur with Reverend Ledra.

It is now for the board and Health Minister, Henry Jeffrey to go public on what needs to be done to give full expression to the provisions of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act and to commit to providing the information for the public to evaluate the effectiveness of the Act. More resources will have to be ploughed into the board's work to ensure that it can capture all of the data necessary and its powers may have to be reshaped so it can interface with the public extensively.

The minister must also have a hard look at the composition of the board and ensure that it is made up of persons who can get the job done. So far, the promise of a transparent mechanism to gauge the effectiveness of abortion law reform has been broken and this is a major disappointment.


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Guyana: Land of Six Peoples