Govt should legalise abortion: Biti

Speaking at an occasion where he was being conferred with an award for successfully challenging child marriages, opposition leader and lawyer Tendai Biti called on government to legalise abortion stating that hundreds of girls are dying because of illegal abortions.

Said Biti:

So, there are hundreds of girls that are dying because of illegal abortions. The Termination of Pregnancy Act in Zimbabwe is terrible. Those with money just go to South Africa to those clinics, it’s very cheap anyway, because it is subsidised by the State. For the rich and the middle-class, abortion is one hour away, but not for the majority of our young girls in this country and it’s endemic. The government needs to repeal the Termination of Pregnancy Act and remove other barriers to accessing safe reproductive health services for women and allow women to take responsibility of their reproductive health . . . If we have to be equal like we did in the (Loveness) Mudzuru case (the child marriages case), one of the things that we have to do is to democratise the right of access to abortion.

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