Swaziland needs to talk about illegal abortions

Because pregnancies can only be terminated legally in extreme instances such as rape, many women find other ways. And many do not survive the process.

By: Cebelihle Mbuyisa
27 Oct 2020

On 22 May 2000, Elizabeth Matimba and Joyce Mdluli sat on benches in the High Court of Swaziland (eSwatini) in Mbabane and heard Judge Thomas Masuku denounce them for the crime of abortion. Matimba had, in 1998, taken her pregnant daughter to Mdluli, then a nurse at Mbabane Government Hospital, and asked that she terminate the pregnancy. Mdluli obliged. For this crime, the women were both sentenced to five years in jail.

The case later went to the appeal court, where Judge Jules Browde spoke out strongly against abortion. He nevertheless reduced Matimba’s sentence to three years. The nurse’s conviction and sentence were set aside on the grounds that the crown had failed to prove her guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

Continued: https://www.newframe.com/eswatini-needs-to-talk-about-illegal-abortions/


Swaziland: U.S. Halts Funding to Swaziland NGO As Anti-Abortion Policy Bites

Swaziland: U.S. Halts Funding to Swaziland NGO As Anti-Abortion Policy Bites

Aug 6, 2018

The Family Life Association of Swaziland / Ewsatini has lost a quarter of its total funding after the United States tightened up its policy against abortion.

A total of 56 jobs have been lost.

The halt in US funding worth the equivalent of E10.7 million is a direct result of an executive order signed by US President Donald Trump on his first full day in office. He reinstated and extended what is known as the Mexico City Policy or Global Gag Rule which had first been put in place in 1984.

Continued: https://allafrica.com/stories/201808220415.html


Trump-Pence Administration’s Neocolonial Assault on Reproductive Freedom Is Killing African Women and Girls

Trump-Pence Administration’s Neocolonial Assault on Reproductive Freedom Is Killing African Women and Girls
Jan 23, 2018
Hayley Farless

As advocates and researchers have seen, it is African women and girls who are suffering because of the United States’ interference with reproductive autonomy globally.

Just three days after his inauguration, President Donald Trump issued a memorandum to reinstate and expand the “global gag rule,” a Reagan-era, anti-abortion, foreign policy directive, with the backing of Vice President Mike Pence. Because of this policy, any nongovernmental organization (NGO) outside of the United States that provides abortion procedures, participates in pro-choice advocacy, supplies information about abortion, or offers referrals to abortion providers has been forced to choose between forfeiting U.S. foreign assistance funding or ceasing to provide the basic reproductive health services that its patients need.

The global gag rule, also known as the “Mexico City Policy,” goes beyond just blocking U.S. funding for critical reproductive health services. A Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE) research report notes that this policy also restricts what groups receiving U.S. funds can do with money from all other sources; organizations must subject all their funds to the same restrictions or lose U.S. funding.

Continued: https://rewire.news/article/2018/01/23/trump-pence-administrations-neocolonial-assault-reproductive-freedom-killing-african-women-girls/


Trump’s global gag rule goes far beyond abortion, groups say

Trump's global gag rule goes far beyond abortion, groups say
The Associated Press
Cara Anna
January 23, 2018

JOHANNESBURG — President Donald Trump’s dramatic expansion of a ban on U.S. funding to foreign organizations that promote or provide abortions has left impoverished women around the world without treatment for HIV, malaria and other diseases, health groups say, calling it “devastating” because Trump went where no administration had gone before.

Trump in his first working day in office revived the so-called global gag rule. He expanded on previous versions so that for the first time foreign NGOs that even discuss abortion as an option are barred not only from about $575 million in U.S. family planning funds but also an estimated $8.8 billion in U.S. global health aid. And they must certify that none of their non-U.S. funding goes for abortion-related activities.

Continued: http://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/trumps-global-gag-rule-goes-far-beyond-abortion-groups-say


Clinics for World’s Vulnerable Brace for Trump’s Anti-Abortion Cuts

Clinics for World’s Vulnerable Brace for Trump’s Anti-Abortion Cuts

By DIONNE SEARCEY, NORIMITSU ONISHI and SOMINI SENGUPTA
JAN. 26, 2017

DAKAR, Senegal — The clinic, tucked discreetly inside the student health center on the University of Dakar campus, prescribes birth control pills, hands out condoms and answers questions about sex that young women are nervous about asking in this conservative Muslim country.

The clinic performs no abortions, nor does it discuss the procedure or give advice on where to get one. Senegal, by and large, outlaws abortion. But for other health services like getting contraceptives, said Anne Lancelot, the Sahel director at the organization that runs the clinic, “there is a very high demand.”

Now, under a Reagan-era policy revived by President Trump, the clinic may no longer be able to count on aid money from the United States Agency for International Development, part of a ban on providing abortion counseling overseas that could curtail a broad range of health services, including those that go well beyond abortion.

[continued at link]
Source, New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/world/africa/clinics-health-care-cuts-abortion-trump.html?_r=0