The Religious Leaders Network for Choice has asked members of parliament to consider tabling and pass the Termination of Pregnancy Bill during the current seating of Parliament.
Addressing the media in Lilongwe on Saturday, the Network Chairperson Reverend Farther Martin Bob Kalimbe said legislators should consider this as sexual reproductive and healthy rights issue which mainly concern women who are at times faced with moral as well as medical dilemmas.
According to Kalimbe, their call has come following consultations that took place from 2013 to 2016 which were led by the diverse professionals including faith leaders from different religions mother bodies who represented their affiliates.
He further said his Network also conducted a research in which they found out that the bill should be allowed in certain instances, like when the pregnancy will endanger the life of pregnant woman, where the termination is necessary to prevent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman, where there’s severe malformation of the foetus which will affect its viability and compatibility with life and where the pregnancy is a result of rape, incest or defilement.
“We are of the view that the call from the ministry of health prior to 2013 to review the current laws guiding termination of pregnancy did not come out the vacuum but that health professionals were convinced beyond reasonable doubt that unsafe abortion is a serious cause of death among women who could be saved if an alternative law was passed,” said Kalimbe
He also made a further call to religious mother bodies that were present in the special law commission which made the recommendations of the proposed bill to rise above denominationalism and allow parliamentarians to deliberate and pass the bill into law without undue interference considering the fact that it’s their own bill which they took part to draft through the report they endorsed in 2016.
He added that this is a proposed Bill which if passed into law, will save a certain group of women who should be given second chance rather than condemning them to early preventable death.
