WENDY MUPERIZIMBABWE’S tight abortion laws aren’t curbing demand, they’re driving them underground — and it’s about to get worse.
Tapiwa Chiwenga was two months pregnant when she slipped the pink pills inside herself, lay down on her bed, and prayed they would do their job.
They had to.
She was 22. Her boyfriend, an international student in Zimbabwe on a scholarship, loved her fiercely. But he was broke. So was she. She lived with her cousin and didn’t have a job. A baby simply was not in the cards.
But the pills didn’t do anything. So her boyfriend went out and bought more.
This time, “I nearly touched hell,” she remembers. For days, as she tried to hide her symptoms, Chiwenga, who asked that her real name not be used, bled and swelled. Her stomach ached sharply.
The pregnancy was gone, but by now, the couple had spent an astronomical US$180 (R2 500) on the pills and had nothing left for a doctor. Finally, her cousin brought her to a gynaecologist, who explained she was having complications from her abortion.
When he heard the diagnosis, Chiwenga’s cousin kicked her out of the house.
Chiwenga’s story is a common one in Zimbabwe, where the country’s 1977 Termination of Pregnancy Act only allows the procedure in cases where the pregnancy endangers the life of the woman, the unborn child is severely deformed, or in cases of incest and rape. In practice, however, not even women in these kinds of situations can access safe abortions easily, a 2014 case in the country’s supreme court revealed.
About 66 800 abortions were performed in Zimbabwe in 2016, an October 2018 study published in the journal PLOS ONE found. Lead author and senior research scientist at the United States reproductive health think tank the Guttmacher Institute, Elizabeth Sully says almost all of the terminations took place outside of health facilities and the regulatory framework — and were likely illegal.
“We know the majority are clandestine because health facilities only reported performing a very small number of abortions and the legal requirements for obtaining one are onerous, making it very difficult for women to access safe and legal abortion services,” she explains.
Only four African countries — Cape Verde, South Africa, Mozambique, and Tunisia — permit elective abortions, while Zambia allows them for health and socioeconomic reasons, the Guttmacher Institute explains on its website.
But like everywhere in the world, Zimbabwean women who want to end their pregnancies find their ways, legal or otherwise. For most women here who don’t qualify under the restrictive law, the only choice is to go underground, to a network of unregulated providers who dole out pills and herbs they promise will do the job.
It can be a dangerous gamble. I found out first-hand.
I’m standing in the market in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare. I ask the traders there for the kind of herbs one might use to end a pregnancy.
Someone points me in the direction of a group of stalls with vendors selling traditional herbs.
There, a woman in charge of the first stall peppers me with questions: How far along are you? Why doesn’t your partner want the baby? Why don’t you want the baby?
I answer quietly. Then I wait.
In a bid to expose how Zimbabwe’s unsafe abortion underworld operates, I’ve gone undercover pretending to be a client.
Finally, after several hours, I am introduced to Sekai.
She looks to be a little over 50 and wears her hair in long dreadlocks. Dressed in a weathered sky-blue apron and tennis shoes, she has a no-nonsense air. From her place, she peddles a collection of plants promising to cure a bewildering array of ailments, including concoctions to lure lovers — and of course, mixtures that promise to end my fake pregnancy.
“The price is US$25 (R340),” she tells me sharply.
“I am very affordable considering you are three months pregnant.”
A medical doctor, she noted, would charge me between US$150 (R2 060) and US$200 (R2 700), a price that had recently spiked because new taxes were implemented on mobile money — the most common form of currency here.
While mixing the powdered herbs — whose names she guards tightly — she dishes out instructions.
“Take two teaspoons every day in porridge or water until finished,” she tells me coldly.
A few weeks after her abortion, Chiwenga was still bleeding, and her feet were prickly and always cold.
A friend told her about Katswe Sistahood, which referred Chiwenga to Population Services Zimbabwe, an organisation that provides sexual and reproductive health rights services and treated her at no cost.
Chiwenga was lucky.
