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As reported in The Star
Medical practitioners in Kenya should include religious leaders in their discussions on abortion, a prominent preacher and parliamentarian said, according to The Star newspaper.
The Kenya Medical Association, which brings together medical practitioners to advise the government on health issues, met last week to discuss the implications of Kenya’s new 2010 constitution on maternal health.
“We need dialogue because the church carries the values of the people and no one should be left out of the process because it involves the lives of our future generations, mothers and wives,” the paper reported Reverend Mutava Musyimi, former secretary general of the National Council of Churches of Kenya, as saying.
Musyimi added that the current system of governance was becoming too liberal.
Kenya’s restrictive abortion law allows women to terminate pregnancies in cases where their physical or mental health is threatened.
However, this right is only realised by women who can afford private hospital care.
Public hospitals do not offer abortion services, driving thousands of women to terminate their pregnancies themselves or via quack doctors.
At least 2,600 women die from unsafe abortion in Kenya each year and another 21,000 are hospitalised, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights.
Women who abort illegally can face up to 14 years in jail. Sometimes they are reported by their neighbours and bleed to death in police cells.
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