Jaevion Nelson | Abort the darn law!

All the fuss and panic about making it legal for women to procure safe, affordable and accessible abortions, if they need them, is rather ridiculous.

People are carrying on as if pro-choice campaigners are commissioning the mass incarceration of women's wombs, so much so that it would prevent them from procreating, as God-ordained, and thereby cause the Jamaican population to go extinct in a few years.

I wish that the lot of you who are so bloody insistent on forcing women to carry to term pregnancies they do not want would detain your warped morality. Challenge yourselves to reconcile with your unfounded discomfort on the matter, and recognise that you have no moral authority to dictate to a woman what she should and should not do because you don't think it is 'right'.

Earlier this week, Member of Parliament for West Rural St Andrew Juliet Cuthbert-Flynn tabled a most timely motion in Parliament that calls on her colleagues in the House to consider "the recommendations of the Abortion Policy Review Group, which was established [in 2005] to provide guidance to [Parliament to] allow women the right to choose". Cuthbert recommended that they "take steps to repeal sections 72 and 73 of the Offences Against the Person Act and substitute them with a civil law titled 'Termination of Pregnancy Act as [was] recommended by the Abortion Policy Review Group' when it concluded its review in 2007.

Time has indeed come for us to treat with this matter that we have been vacillating about for decades in a rational and responsible way. The Government cannot reasonably continue to pussyfoot with women's right in this regard and keep denying women the right to choose. It is cruel and inhuman.

Surveys, including the 2018 survey by Johnson Survey Research Limited titled A Woman's Right to Choose, show that despite some 'concerns', Jamaicans believe that women should be able to enjoy this right. One can't help but ask, who exactly are our parliamentarians pandering to if 67 per cent of men and 82 per cent of women believe the Government has no place in determining if or when a woman ends her pregnancy?

Parliament must act now. Make a bold move, and give our women the right to choose now. We have been debating this for too long to not have made any progress whatsoever. From as early as 1969, for example, seven years after our Independence, the Jamaica Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws was established to advocate for changes to the law.

Nothing has changed except that more and more women are having unsafe abortions and putting themselves at risk. Go to Victoria Jubilee Hospital in Kingston, and you will see how many patients they have because of botched abortions.

The legality of abortions will help to make safe services more accessible to the thousands of women across the country who need it. The recommendations from the Abortion Policy Review Group are quite clear. There is more than enough guidance and good practice on the matter that would ensure women are certain of the decision they make to terminate a pregnancy and the time in which this can be done, as well as the importance of the support provided afterwards.

Commendations to Juliet Cuthbert-Flynn for tabling this motion. It's always so lovely to see backbench MPs taking leadership in Parliament.

I sincerely hope that Parliament will take her advice and "no longer sit on the sidelines while debates rage around the false dichotomy of pro-choice and pro-life." Abort the darn law! Give women the right to choose.

- Jaevion Nelson is a human-rights and economic and social-justice advocate. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and jaevion@gmail.com.