IN the past couple of years, there has been increased media attention concerning reproductive health and rights in general and abortion in particular.

Prior to this development, media reports on issues concerning reproductive health, especially abortion, were mainly sensational which contributed to the stigmatization of women who terminated pregnancies.

At this point in time, religious and cultural organisations enjoyed enormous amount of publicity which made the Nigerian woman look bad on issues that concerned her reproductive health and rights. It was easy to find and read stories and articles that were both biased or a little objective on abortion.

While many of such stories bordered on religious dogma, others were tainted with a lot of misinformation, half-truths and name-calling.

Very few articles made spirited efforts to explain what the whole issue of abortion is all about. Over time, reproductive health experts noticed that these publications which were supported by a restrictive abortion law had caused the death of many Nigerian women.

Women who got pregnant courtesy of rape, incest or women whose health condition could not withstand nine months of pregnancy were dying in their droves in the bid to terminate a pregnancy.

To seek a solution to the high death toll, the experts started engaging women groups, lawyers and other stakeholders, including journalists for sake of enlightening them on issues of reproductive health and rights, as well as abortion. The enlightenment which exposed the stakeholders to scientific proofs, realities and facts about abortion and reproductive health and rights, caused shifts in position on the subject matter.

Many journalists who often see issues of abortion and reproductive health and rights from the lens of religion, culture and myths, discovered that most information they have been brainwashed with were neither scientific or factual. The result of the latest information at their disposal was a collapse of the romance they had with the anti-choice groups and individuals.

In their bid to fight back, some of these individuals and groups opposed to abortion either publish misleading articles in the media or attack reports published by journalists who are aware of the issues and can contextualise matters related to abortion. Such journalists are convinced that the issues and the new information at their disposal should be in the public domain.

The outcome of this development is that there is now a healthy debate on whether abortion is desirable or not, whether there is need to reform abortion law in Nigeria and whether a woman deserves the right to make a choice or take a decision on what to do withher body as well as how she can manage her reproductive health and rights.

As the debate rages, two key individuals, Sonnie Ekwowusi and Jerry Okwuosa stand out as arrow-heads of the vanguard of individuals and groups who have sworn that abortion will remain a topic that should not be discussed, meaning that the thousands of women who die from unsafe abortion should continue. Both men are Catholics and members of a Catholic organisation known as the World Congress of Families.

For them, abortion should not be contemplated, no matter the circumstance under which a woman got pregnant and no matter her health condition. For them, once there is antennal care and access to services for pregnant women, abortion should not be condoned.

They also believe that there is no link between reduction in maternal mortality and reduction in deaths caused by unsafe abortion. They believe that abortion should not be contemplated even when a pregnancy is capable of leading to the death of a woman.

It appears that they have forgotten about the law of double effect of the Catholic Church which allows abortion under certain conditions, the Italian law on abortion which has been in existence for over 30 years, the high contraceptive prevalent rate among Catholic women in Italy which stands at 60 per cent and the recent pronouncement of the Pope that discordant couples should use condom.

A misleading information in Okwuosa’s article published in a national newspaper is that he isolated death from unsafe abortion as if it was the only cause of maternal deaths, when it is common knowledge that hemorrhage accounts for a majority of maternal deaths, while hypertensive diseases, prolonged obstructed labour as well as infection are known to have contributed to Nigeria’s high maternal mortality rate.

In South Africa where he claimed that maternal mortality had not reduced since its abortion law was reformed, it is evident that deaths from unsafe abortion in South Africa reduced by 50 per cent since the procedure was legalized in 1997 and that the increase in the maternal mortality rate of that country is  due to HIV/AIDS.

Okwuosa also gave the impression that maternal mortality rate will drop immediately abortion law is liberalized in a country, saying it was not the experience in Nepal and Ethiopia where abortion laws have been reformed.

Mr. EMMANUEL EKWUEME, a commentator  on national issues, wrote from Abuja.