WALTER WUTHMANN
Last week youth activist Sarah Soysa was optimistic about the fate of the Abortion Bill she had spent months lobbying for. The Cabinet had reportedly approved papers that would legalize two forms of abortions in Sri Lanka: if a mother was raped or if the fetus had a lethal congenital birth defect.
“I am very surprised and happy to witness public response,” she said about the conversations she’d had regarding the Bill. “It’s quite progressive.”
Soysa, who heads the Youth Advocacy Network, advocates for universal access to abortion in Sri Lanka. She also documents the reality of abortion on the ground.
In a video Soysa produced in 2014, an unidentified young woman describes her choice to have an abortion.
After the girl moved away from her parents’ home to a cousin’s in Colombo, she said that her cousin pressured her constantly into having sex as a condition for her staying with him.
She found out she was pregnant after he left for work in Australia. A friend took her to an abortion provider in Borella and she said the process was incredibly painful.
Hers is the kind of situation that Soysa believes the current initiative to legalize two forms of abortion that could begin to be addressed.
These types of stories are not unique. The Sri Lanka Journal of Medicine estimates that nearly 700 abortions take place in the country daily, even though the law currently states that abortions could only be performed to save a mother’s life.
By contrast, neighboring countries such as India and Singapore, have relatively liberal abortion laws, according to an analysis by the US - based Guttmacher Institute.
The relaxing of laws in Sri Lanka, “should have initiated many, many years ago,” said Madusha Dissanayake, the Public Affairs Director for the Family Planning Association of Sri Lanka.
“We have been penalizing the people the State should have actually providing security for,” she said.
Legislative gridlock
Over the weekend, though, the movement’s momentum stalled. First, Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne said at a media briefing that the status of the legalization initiative was still just a “proposal” but had not been approved by the Cabinet.
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| President of Catholic Bishop’s Conference,His Lordship Bishop Winston Fernando |
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| Youth Activist at Youth Action Network,Sarah Soysa |
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| Family Planning Association, Director Public Affairs, policy and Advocay, Madusha Dissanayake |
Then, the media reported that the drafting of the Bill was on hold, due to President Maithripala Sirisena wanting the religious leaders to consult on it and they were unable to reach a consensus.
Documents reviewed by the Daily News this week, show that the President’s request actually goes back to January.
“This [abortion] memorandum is very convincing on humanitarian grounds to make laws for the purpose,” President Sirisena wrote in a January 16 Cabinet memo. “Since certain religious groups are emphatically against ‘abortion’ … I recommend that the Minister of Justice and other religion related Ministers responsible for religious affairs, should conduct a dialogue with religious leaders before proceeding further on this proposal.” But the record shows that the group of religious leaders and government officials have not met since March 8. At the time since, the Catholic Bishops Conference of Sri Lanka had made strong statements, opposing any move to legalize abortion in the country.
“I expected this of course,” Soysa said in an interview on Tuesday.
“It’s the Catholic Church that comes first,” she said.
“And then what generally happens and what would happen very soon, are the other religious groups, the Buddhist monks and Muslim leaders and everybody concerned, would follow this bandwagon, while everyone will support the same thing.”
Religious opposition
The President of the Bishop’s Conference Bishop Winston Fernando, certainly hopes Soysa’s prediction would comes true.
“No one has a right to take life,” he said in an interview. “Natural birth to natural death, life is sacred. And we believe life begins at the moment of conception.”
For that reason, he said that the Catholic Church opposes any form of abortion whatsoever.
The Church has a well-documented history of lobbying against abortion laws around the world, and with great success in places such as the Philippines, where it remains illegal in all forms.
When Amnesty International changed its policy to support abortions for women who were raped, the Vatican called on the Catholics worldwide, to withdraw their support for the non profit.
Bishop Fernando said the abortion question was not one of politics, but of morality.
“This has been our position since time immemorial,” he said. “I’m surprised that politicians have taken this into their own hands, trying to legalize abortion after all this discussion.”
Fernando said that when Catholic leaders spoke with Buddhist monks, Hindu clergy and Muslim leaders, “we explained our position to them very clearly.”
“And (their) position is the same as ours,” he added.
Dr. Kapila Jayaratne, the National Programme Manager for Maternal and Child Morbidity & Mortality Surveillance at the Family Health Bureau, is a major champion of the current legalization initiative.
He said he tried to keep the conversation concerning abortion away from moral terms. “I don’t even like using the term abortion,” he said in a recent interview, because of the stigma it carries. Instead, he said the proposed Bill was about the “medical termination of pregnancy” in two specific instances.
“We don’t have any other agenda,” he said.
But even Jayaratne was unable to escape from putting the issue, which is so morally divisive, into human terms.
“We daily witness the sufferings of women,” he said. “And it was a suffering for the baby also … he is suffering in utero, and then after delivery, and then after one week he ultimately dies, giving another grievance to the family and the community too.”
“Ours is a medical perspective and what we’re advocating is a human approach,” he added. “We respect belief, but at the same time, we need to look at the suffering.”
The future of abortion
A majority of Sri Lankans may agree with Jayaratne’s opinion. In a survey published in the Ceylon Medical Journal last year, 65 percent of the respondents said abortion should be legalised in cases of rape. Another 53 percent said it should be legal for pregnancies with lethal fetal abnormalities.
But it appears that the Bill would not go to a vote until it gets an OK from religious leaders.
“Progressive leaders need to lobby the President and look at that direction,” Soysa, the youth activist, said this week. “But it’s going to be extremely difficult.”
“Maybe it would fail this time,” she said. “But maybe it would be back again and maybe if it was to come back many more times, it would pass.”
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