A November decision, made public in December, from Zimbabwe’s High Court, found that a law protecting certain preborn children from induced abortion is unconstitutional. The ruling still must be affirmed by the nation’s Constitutional Court.
Judge Maxwell Takuva ruled that women raped by their husbands, as well as girls under the age of 18 who become pregnant, should legally be allowed to kill their preborn children through abortion. He claimed that since marital rape and sex with a minor are illegal in the nation, survivors of those crimes should be allowed to abort their babies if they become pregnant. It was only in September that the nation outlawed sex with anyone under the age of 18 — a two-year increase from the previous age of consent set at 16.
Abortion is legal in Zimbabwe if the pregnancy is a threat to the mother’s health or life, if the child “will permanently be seriously handicapped,” and in cases of rape and incest. That law was put in place in 1977 by the Parliament of Rhodesia (a former British colony), which had a “white minority rule” and had “racial discrimination …. enshrined” in its 1969 constitution. The abortion law became effective beginning on January 1, 1978, and it was kept in place after Zimbabwe won its independence in 1980. The new ruling from Zimbabwe’s High Court states that abortion should now also be allowed in cases of marital rape and violations of the age of consent law.
Obianuju Ekocha, founder and president of Culture of Life Africa, was born and raised in Nigeria and has said that the push to expand contraception and abortion in Africa is “neo-colonialism.”
Women in Law, a pro-abortion group, brought the lawsuit that led to the court’s decision. “It will give them an opportunity, an option, to have a legal abortion, should they wish to have that,” said Isheanesu Chirisa, national director of Women in Law in Southern Africa.
According to reports, nearly one in four girls ages 10-19 in Zimbabwe become pregnant, and one in three girls is married before age 18. Many are victims of sexual violence and will be forced to marry the men who sexually assaulted them. The judge argued that allowing abortion for marital rape and girls under age 18 “is significant in light of the massive instances of teenage pregnancies in Zimbabwe, and consequently illegal teen abortion and teenage mortalities.”
Induced abortion — the direct and intentional killing of a preborn child — is not a solution for rape. Lianna Rebolledo, founder of Loving Life, was raped at age 12 by two men and became pregnant. She refused abortion, saying that girls pregnant from rape need support, not an abortionist looking to profit off of their trauma.
READ: The abortion industry is renewing its push to promote death in Africa
“Just knowing that I had my baby girl, it helped me. It helped me to heal and I just knew that my daughter had a purpose in life,” she explained. “And she gave me the strength to go on. She gave me hope. She showed me what real love was, and because of her, I am who I am right now.”
She added, “[Abortion] doesn’t help you. It’s just a double rape. That’s the way I thought about it, that it was going to be a double rape. And if I did that, I don’t think I would be alive today.”
Statistics published by pro-abortion Guttmacher show that teenagers in Zimbabwe facing unintended pregnancies are more likely to carry the pregnancy to term than women ages 20-35 and above. Seventy-five percent (75%) of unintended pregnancies in teens ages 15-19 end in the birth of the child, while 9% end in abortion. More than a third of women ages 30-35 who faced unintended pregnancies had an abortion.
Instances of rape have been on the rise in Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwe Gender Commission reported that 22 women are raped daily in the country, with one woman raped every 75 minutes. Nearly 650 women are sexually abused monthly, and one in three girls is raped or sexually assaulted before they reach age 18. There have been calls to reform sexual violence laws in Zimbabwe to address “the problematic characterization of certain acts of a sexual nature as ‘indecent’ when, instead, they should be properly proscribed as violations of sexual autonomy” as well as “the lack of adequate protection of children against sexual exploitation.”
France 24, a French public broadcast service, featured the story of a woman named Mildred who was raped during a robbery. Mildred said she doesn’t want her daughter “to suffer” the same way she did and is therefore fighting to stop sexual violence “because I don’t want my daughter to suffer the same way I suffered because I love her so much. She’s my source of joy.”
Tell President Trump, RFK, Jr., Elon, and Vivek:
Stop killing America’s future. Defund Planned Parenthood NOW!
