MBOMBELA – Even though abortion has been legalised in South Africa, a number of women still opt for back street abortions and unfortunately, many face the harsh consequences associated with such practices.
In 2011, a then 17-year-old young woman, who spoke in confidence that her identity should not be revealed, told Mpumalanga News that she still remembers her ordeal as if it happened yesterday.
“After finding out that I was pregnant, I knew that my single mother would be devastated and I decided to get rid of the baby,” she stated.
She said that she was scared of going to her local clinic since the workers there knew her mother well, fearing that they would tell her. She had seen adverts and flyers advertising “pain free” abortion procedure by a certain Mama Rose.
“After phoning the number I got from one of the advertisements that were all over the township, I was told to go to a certain corner and to describe what I was wearing. Someone then led me to a dark room with a sole, bare mattress lying on the floor.
“Inside, Mama Rose asked me how far I was and I told her that I had not been seeing my periods for the past five months and she told me that I was still at an early stage and took out an envelope with three pills, placed one under my tongue and pushed two down my vagina,”she continued, trembling.
She says she was told that she would start to feel pain and then start to bleed – a sign that the abortion was happening. At home she waited and after five hours, she began to feel abdominal cramps, but there was no presence of blood.
Starting to worry, she called Mama Rose who told her not to be a “sissy” and wait and the next thing she remembers was waking up in a hospital on a blood soaked bed.
Another woman told the publication that she still experiences heavy bleeding that last for 10 days during her monthly periods after she had a back street abortion early this year.
Mpumalanga News went undercover and spoke to ‘doctors’ who perform these abortions. Two of them who are foreigners, said that even though the law states that an abortion can be performed within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, they do it even when a woman is six months pregnant.
One of the reporters, who told one of the doctors that she actually was on her sixth month, was told that at the stage, the easier method would be to remove the baby using some instrument. The doctor could not further elaborate saying that the reporter should just bring the money and trust that all will go well.
The question is: Why do women choose the wrong way of doing this when there is provision by the government to freely access help in cases where they cannot keep pregnancies?
A young woman from Bushbuckridge says that even though they know the risks, they take chances because they cannot stand the humiliation from health workers in public institutions.
“When I accompanied my friend to the local clinic, the nurses were rude to her when they found out that she was there for an abortion. Everyone in the township ended up knowing that she had an abortion,” she adds.
Dr Lydia Silinda has warned young women of the dangers that follow an abortion procedure that was not performed accordingly, saying some effects are for life. “Back street abortions carry more than just legal risks.
Mothers risk severe complications and death and sometimes when the abortion fails, in these cases, a foetus has to be removed and that could result in abdominal trauma to the intestines and bladder.”
She adds that the main complication in carrying out a termination, particularly at a late stage in the pregnancy, is with continuous bleeding. “Sometimes the bleeding will not stop,” she said.
