Rwanda has announced the release of 50 women detained for having abortions. Since 2018, termination of pregnancy has been permitted but only in certain cases.
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On 20 May, Rwandan president Paul Kagame announced the release of 50 women who had been imprisoned for having abortions or for having helped other women terminate a pregnancy. Six of them had been sentenced to life imprisonment. Justice Minister Johnston Busingye stated that these women too were released on Tuesday 19 May. The previous year, Kagame himself had ordered a similar measure in favour of 52 women.
According to Equality now, a non-governmental organisation that defends women's rights, the release was decided as part of a broader plan to reduce the number of detainees. The aim was to slow the spread of coronavirus. The British newspaper The Independent reported that last week the government of the African nation granted parole to 3,596 detainees. A further 1,182 were released in April.
The release of the women was welcomed by human rights groups, including Equality now itself. But a release from prison is not enough. "Even though this is a good move, women and girls should never, in the first place, be imprisoned for exercising their rights," said Dr Agnes Odhiambo, a member of Human rights watch in Kenya. "The Rwandan government," she added, "should eliminate all punitive measures against women who undergo an abortion."
In 2018, Rwanda updated its penal code to legalise abortion in cases of rape, incest, forced marriage, and where the pregnancy poses a significant risk to health. But this has conveyed the wrong message, according to Odhiambo: namely that women must suffer abuse in order to exercise their rights.
Furthermore, even when termination of pregnancy is permitted, the law requires that the abortion be performed by a doctor. This clause poses a logistical problem in a country where the healthcare system is short-staffed. Data from the Rwanda medical and dental council from 2016 show that the African nation has one doctor for every 10,055 people and one midwife for every 4,064 women between the ages of 15 and 49.
"Allowing only a 'recognised doctor' to perform abortions threatens to make access to safe abortions nearly impossible for many women and girls, particularly those who are poor, illiterate and from rural areas," Odhiambo stressed in the columns of the British newspaper The Guardian. "Studies," she added, "have shown that trained nurses and midwives are just as capable as doctors of ensuring patient safety."
Due to the restrictive laws in place in Rwanda, a large number of women undergo illegal abortions. A report from the Guttmacher Institute published in 2013 estimates that 60,000 are carried out every year, the majority of which occur in unsafe conditions. The complication rate for illegal abortions in Rwanda is estimated at 55 per cent. But the criminalisation of abortion also deters women from seeking further medical care in the event of side effects.
And even when a pregnancy is terminated in the cases provided for by the new law, as the Washington Post reports, obtaining support is not easy. This is because the choice to have an abortion remains a stigmatised one in Rwandan culture.
