NEARLY every lamp post, rubbish bin and brick wall in Johannesburg’s downtown is plastered with garish ads offering abortions that are “quick, safe and pain-free”, and just a phone call away. So when Busi, a student, unintentionally fell pregnant while far from home in her first year of university, calling a number from a lamp-post ad seemed the easiest fix. Fear crept in when the “doctor” handed her pills in a shabby room. “I was too ashamed to tell my family,” she recalls. “It could have gone so wrong.”
Abortion, banned during apartheid, was legalised in 1996, partly to stop the dangerous backroom procedures that were taking the lives of more than 400 women a year. But many South African women still find themselves in the shady backrooms and unlicensed clinics advertised on the streets. About half of all abortions happen outside proper hospitals and clinics. “This tells you there is definitely something wrong,” says Shenilla Mohamed, the executive director of Amnesty International, a campaign group, in South Africa....Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/2EeawQr
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