Showing posts with label kenya. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kenya. Show all posts

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Kenya: Women & Abortion

From CNN News:
Women are being forced into backstreet abortions in Kenya because of the country's restrictive abortion law, a study says.

And the law could soon get even tougher with church groups urging a ban on almost all abortions.

The U.S.-based Center for Reproductive Health, which advocates abortions rights, found that women and girls in Kenya use metal wires, knitting needles and other unsafe practices to abort tens of thousands of unwanted pregnancies.

Musya said fetuses are dumped in the sprawling Kibera slum. She said that every week they find aborted fetuses in one garbage-filled stream. They wash away or get eaten by pigs, she said.

The report says that Kenya's current confusing abortion law forces women to the backstreets.

So in Kibera, where shacks are packed together on a warren of garbage strewn streets, they search out abortionists.

Now church groups in Kenya are pushing for the new constitution, coming up for a parliamentary vote soon, to make almost all abortions illegal. The church groups want to define 'life as starting at conception,' and heavily restrict abortion except for cases where a mother's life is in immediate danger.

Friday, September 25, 2009

Women Face Mutilation

From Di Bain @ ABC News:
The Federal Opposition is refusing to support legislation that could protect two
young Kenyan women who fear they will be mutilated if they are deported from
Australia.

The women came to Australia on tourist visas for last year's World Youth Day and have asked to stay, saying they will be persecuted if they are sent home.

For eight years, the Refugee Council of Australia (RCA) has been fighting for the Government to enshrine in law protection rights for women who faced genital mutilation in their own country.

Immigration Minister Chris Evans says he is still waiting to receive the women's appeal, but has put legislation before the Parliament that would prevent the women being deported.

The laws known as "complementary protection" have been introduced but not yet debated in Parliament.