Archaic law on abortion

THE EDITOR: In a few days, on June 24, we will mark the 200th anniversary of the first statutory law on abortion. It was in 1803 that Lord Ellenborough’s Act first entered the law books. Before that date there was no statutory provision against abortion. Until that date, abortion was not known as a statutory crime. That is the law that was modified and became the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, and which remains the parent of the abortion law here and throughout the Commonwealth. The source of that law then, Great Britain, modified the law and made abortion legal as long ago as 1967 — more than a generation ago. Several Commonwealth countries have followed suit and advanced the law of abortion from their criminal code to civil law. These include Barbados and Guyana, Canada, Singapore, and South Africa. A longer list of other Commonwealth countries has retained the frame of the criminal law but expanded the list of exemptions allowing for lawful abortion. These include Belize, St Vincent, Australia, Cyprus, Fiji, India and Zambia. We, in Trinidad and Tobago remain stuck with a law from two centuries ago. What will it take to persuade you to stand with those of us who want nothing more than to improve maternal health for all women?
 
What additional data do you need to make you comfortable in helping us to point to the inane irrationality of a law that creates a huge public health problem, and is persistently one of the leading causes of hospital admission? What more do you need in order for us to win your support in pointing out the gross social injustice of this archaic law? The law denies women access to public hospitals for safe abortions, yet readily provides services for them once they have harmed themselves in unsafe procedures. The net result of this absurd policy is that poor women’s lives and their reproductive capacity are compromised and the cost to our health system is ridiculously increased. Who wins in this irrational calculus? Whose interests are served? Why is there such inertia in facing a glaring inequity? Why must poor women suffer the ravages of unsafe procedures under the criminal law of abortion, while others are free to live above that same law, enjoying access to safe abortions from private medical practitioners? What must we do for you to feel the urgency and join us in asking the Government to respond to our plea submitted to them on November 25, 2002, more than six months ago? Is it not time that we devote attention to what is arguably our longest standing public health problem, and incidentally, perhaps the only one we can address and simultaneously save money? We are submitting this along with a cartoon that tells the tale more clearly than our sentences. We hope you will make some space for it on your editorial page. Thank you.

WILBERT PERMEL, Chairman
DYLIS MC DONALD, Project Director ASPIRE