By Mabinty Kamara
Religious leaders have voted unanimously against the ‘Safe Abortion Act 2015’ at the end of an interfaith summit convened to discuss the increasingly controversial piece of proposed legislation.
The summit hosted at the Saint Anthony’s Church on Syke Street in Freetown was called by the Inter Religious Council (IRC) which was leading a campaign against what it believed would set the country on the path to moral decadence.
The ‘Safe Abortion Act 2015’ passed by parliament in December 2015 was fronted by pro-abortion campaigners as a response to high fatality and afterbirth complications due to unsafe abortion, a situation they said was occasioned by the existing pre-colonial law that forbade the practice. The new bill would allow for pregnancies up to 12 weeks to be aborted at will, for as long as the woman was above 18. Beyond 12 weeks a pregnancy can only be aborted under conditions of forced pregnancy, incest, among other situations triggered by medical considerations.
The bill was prevented from becoming law when President Ernest Bai Koroma failed to sign it until the constitutional time for him to do so elapsed on 6, January this year. The president failed to sign it under pressure from religious leaders who said they were not consulted by proponents of the bill.
Thursday’s summit was designed for religious establishments to come up with a unified position on the fate of the legislation.However, at the end of the over two-hour-long discussions, there was no definitive position.
The voting was done to agree on the motion on whether the IRC should refer the bill to parliament for review. The Council promised to present a final position paper in parliament this Wednesday 27, 2016.
Some 378 people, including religious leaders, medical doctors, lawyers, government officials and women’s rights advocates, registered to participate at the summit, said the organizers.
IRC President, Sheik Abu Bakar Conteh, making a presentation on abortion from the Islamic point of view, said while some schools of thought believed that it was permissible between 40 and 42 days or up to 120 days of gestation, they contended that it should be justified by health reasons.
Some other scholars were of the view that life would start immediately after conception, Imam Conteh said, noting that as far as the religion was concerned, “abortion was a crime and punishable by God”.
“Except in narrow exceptions abortion is a destruction of life and it is an unlawful act,” he said, citing verses in the Quran supporting his claims.
“They have no rights to take out what Allah has put in their womb,” the Imam added, citing yet more verses.
Archbishop Tamba Charles of the Freetown Diocese of the Catholic Church, who is also vice president of the IRC, presented the Christian view of abortion. He described the “Safe abortion Act’ as a misleading piece of legislation propagated on the premises of right to choice. “No life can be destroyed on the basis of choice as life is sacred,” he declared.
He said the condemnation of abortion by the Church was in line with its doctrine of protecting the vulnerable segment of society, which included the unborn child.
“If they want to fight for the right of women then let them be provided with the required medical facilities that will help reduce maternal mortality rate in the country and not that which can claim their lives,” he said.
Every life matters at every stage, once conceived, said Bishop Archibald Cole, President of the Pentecostal Churches in Sierra Leone.
Meanwhile, Dr. Abubakarr Fofanah, minister of health and sanitation, said lack of proper consultation of the medical establishment made it harder for them to make their input, hence the deficiencies in the legislation.
“How can someone take such a bill to parliament when the minister and his doctors and nurses, who will be doing the job, are not informed about it?” he demanded, before urging for “a rational judgment” on the final analysis.
Gynecologist Dr. Christian Bell, making a presentation on behalf of the Medical and Dental Council, took the audience through the various types of abortion as recommended by the World Health Organisation, WHO.
“From the medical point of view, the ‘Safe Abortion Act 2015’ in its present form will encourage and promote unsafe abortion and therefore could be counterproductive,” he said at the end of his presentation.
Gender activist Mbalu Sesay, handpicked to speak on behalf of the women folk, said she believed if parliamentarians had had the information unveiled at the end of the summit, they would not have enacted the bill. She said this should be a wakeup call for the religious leaders who should now consider using their altar to advocate against immorality.
“I also want our women organizations to act when necessary and not to wait until women are in danger before they jump on the street with banners doing fire brigade advocacy,” she said.
Fornah Sesay, a legal practitioner, remarked that had his mother aborted his pregnancy he would not have been standing before the podium.
“This is the beginning of bad days in the country as these so called white men will use their money to influence our politicians to give us all sorts of laws. So let’s stand up against them,” he urged.
(C) Politico 26/01/16
