ASPIRE 28 years behind Caricom

THE EDITOR: ASPIRE has been vilified as “pro-abortion” simply because we have done research and requested a public dialogue to review our law of abortion. Actually, we are 28 years behind our own Caricom Ministers of Health. Every specialist in Maternal health care can attest to this.

Ever since 1975, the Ministers of Health have been making and revising resolutions regarding abortion law reform. The 1993 version of the Strategy reads as follows: “Appropriate measures for the management and reduction of induced abortion and their complications should be taken for the protection of the women’s health.” “Family planning information and services should be provided to all hospitalised post-abortion patients.” “Laws related to abortion should be reviewed with a view toward their liberalisation, if deemed appropriate.” “Where abortions are performed, they should be done by a suitably trained person.” “In each such case, pre and post-abortion counselling should be offered to the patient.”

Abortion law reform is listed as one of the priority areas for legislative action. Yet in more than a quarter of a century only Barbados (1983) and Guyana (1995) have taken any serious legislative action. Both of those initiatives occurred when a woman was Minister of Health, Billie Miller in Barbados and Gail Teixeira in Guyana. Perhaps the present reluctance of our Minister of Health deserves more sympathy than we have been willing to extend. Masculinity may be an impediment to a full appreciation of the grievous extent of the harm of unsafe abortion.

HAZEL MONTANO
Blue Range