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Christian and medical pro-life activists in South Africa have expressed outrage and disbelief at the approval of an abortion-on-demand bill by the legislature despite overwhelming public resistance to abortion on demand.

Following the largest-ever campaign against abortion in South Africa, the National Assembly adopted the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Bill on October 30. The bill needed 201 votes for passage, and it received 209, with 87 National Assembly lawmakers opposed. The Senate confirmed the legislation November 5 with a 49-to-21 vote. President Nelson Mandela signed it into law December 11.

The bill permits abortion on demand for any woman, up to the twelfth week of pregnancy. It provides for abortion from the thirteenth to the twentieth week if a medical practitioner believes it necessary to ensure the health of the woman, or if "the continued pregnancy would significantly affect the social or economic circumstances of the woman."

DISSENTERS STIFLED: Christian groups have blasted Mandela's majority African National Congress (ANC) for not allowing a free vote of individual members who did not agree with party views on the legislation. More than 60 ANC members who apparently objected to the bill stayed away from the National Assembly on the day of the vote.

ANC objectors were not allowed to oppose the bill, and pro-lifers have noted that the legislation would have died had those dissenting ANC lawmakers been given the freedom to vote their conscience. All opposition parties other than the small Democratic Party and the Pan Africanist Congress voted against the bill.

ANC leaders driving the legislation were undemocratic, says Fano Sibisi, president of the lobbyist organization Christians for Truth (CFT). "They are so pro-choice that they won't allow their members to choose, because they know exactly what would have happened."

He pointed to opinion polls published prior to the vote suggesting a vast majority of South Africans, including 77 percent of ANC supporters, opposed the bill. "This thing has brought the question in my mind, Who then is ruling South Africa?" Sibisi says. "It must be a few people, a clique within the ANC that is ruling this country."

But South Africa Health Minister Nkosazana Zuma noted that of 45,000 mostly black and poor women who turn up at hospitals following abortions annually, 12,000 are "very ill" or sterile, and about 500 die from complications. She says the problem of botched back-street abortions has to be solved by giving women a choice to terminate the pregnancy safely in a medical facility, not by "moralizing around it."

CFT refutes those figures, saying few of the 45,000 abortions are the back-street type, and that one in five pregnancies ends in a spontaneous abortion, or miscarriage.

DOCTORS OBJECT: Strong criticism of the bill continues to come from the medical profession itself. Officials at 15 hospitals in the rural area of KwaZula/Natal have stated they will not allow abortions.

Shortly before the National Assembly vote, the ANC-dominated House scrapped a clause that would have protected from prosecution or discrimination doctors who object to performing abortions.

Doctors for Life (DFL) has played a leading role in opposing the bill. In the largest abortion survey of medical doctors in South Africa carried out by dfl, 82 percent said they would be unwilling to perform abortion on demand. According to DFL president Albu van Eeden, the legislation was "badly planned, impractical, immoral, and permissive."

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January 6 1997, Vol. 41, No. 1