(Second Reading debate)

Mr Chairperson, Deputy President, hon members, everbody in the House, tens of thousands of women terminate pregnancies every year in this country for a variety of reasons. Though termination was legalised in South Africa by the previous government in 1975, the vast majority of poor and mainly black women resort to backstreet terminations because the present law is only accessible to the affluent.

Hundreds of women—more than all the members of this Assembly—die annually from these unsafe and illegal terminations of pregnancy. This Bill that we are debating today is an attempt to save the lives of those hundreds of women by giving them the choice to terminate a pregnancy in safety and in dignity.

The Bill also asserts that the reproductive choice lies with the woman. In addition, it allows for those who oppose termination, for whatever reason, to hold that view and to exercise their choice accordingly. No one will ever be forced by this Bill to terminate a pregnancy if he or she does not wish to.

Thousands of women who have backstreet abortions end up ill in hospital. Some spend days in intensive care units, at great cost to the State and the Department of Health. It is more important to assist with a safe termination early in pregnancy than to try to deal with the consequences of a backstreet termination in an emergency. A legal termination is more humane and is cost-effective. It will save lives and resources, and we can use the space in our intensive care units for emergencies that cannot be prevented.

Consultation between the woman and her partner is encouraged, but when there is a dispute the final decision rests with the woman. The Bill also encourages women under 18 to discuss the pregnancy with their parents, relatives or guardians. I have no doubt that where a relationship allows for open debate and discussion, these women will do so and may even get support from their parents about whether or not to terminate a pregnancy. But we are also aware that many children are abused by members of their families and, in certain cases, by relatives, and therefore in those cases it would be difficult, and sometimes not possible, for an abused young woman to discuss the matter with and get consent from the abuser.

Approximately one out of every four mothers who give birth in South Africa is under 20 years old. It is also common knowledge for most of us that these women are still at school when they fall pregnant, and when they find out that they are pregnant, they are terrified to discuss the matter with their parents. In fact most parents only find out when the pregnancy is advanced—maybe when the uniform no longer fits around their daughter’s waist, or sometimes when this young girl wears a jersey even when the temperature is 38rC. Her parents begin to wonder what the matter is, and then they find out that their daughter is pregnant.

The department feels very strongly that we should create an environment in South Africa in which there is less and less of a need for abortions.

Therefore we have discussed this with the Department of Education and agreed to introduce life-skills education at schools, starting from primary school. We are doing this because we feel very strongly that it is important for young children to know the dangers of early sexual activity and to know how to make informed decisions. We feel that if we do that there will be fewer unwanted and unplanned pregnancies amongst the young.

We have also expanded, and we continue to expand, primary health care in the rest of the country, and this will, amongst other things, make sure that women have access to family planning and that it is affordable to them. It will also make sure that pregnancies are safer, because in this country many women still die from childbirth and its consequences. We would like to see motherhood as something which women enjoy and something which is safe in South Africa. We would also strive for a society which minimises the need for termination of pregnancy. From the health side we are doing our best, but most of the work has to be done out there by the rest of society.

I would like to thank Dr Nkomo, the chairperson of the portfolio committee, and all members of the committee for dealing so professionally and sensitively with this issue. My gratitude also goes to all the members in the House who have contributed to this debate before today. But more importantly, I would like to thank members of the public who have given such unprecedented attention to this Bill. I do not think that there has been anything that has gone through this Parliament that has been debated with such conviction and passion by the public. This has been the most robust debate that our democracy has experienced. I hope that the momentum and the energy that has been galvanised so far will not be lost, but will be channelled to the plight of the children and poor women. I hope that that energy will help to reconstruct our value systems so that fewer women need termination and even fewer children suffer when they are born.

This Bill will contribute to the building of a better life for all by treating women as equals, with dignity and compassion, and more importantly by saving their lives. I would like to conclude by quoting from a letter from a woman priest called The Rev Renate Cochrane of Pietermaritzburg. It is headed: AProchoice Decision Should Be Made Between a Woman and Her God.The letter reads as follows:

As a Christian woman and minister of religion, writing in my personal capacity, I am deeply ashamed that we have not organised a Christian women’s lobby group to support prochoice legislation on abortion.

All the major theological contributions on abortion have been written by males, mostly arguing against abortion on request.

This does not imply that all women are prochoice, but many Christian women have arrived at this conclusion. Many have witnessed the horrific consequences of an incomplete abortion. Others have seen young mothers bleeding to death. This trauma is difficult for males to comprehend.

We deeply respect the prolife view of our fellow Christians. Their arguments have some theological support and we sense a genuine concern for the sacredness of life. Their theological explication, however, is idealistic to the point where human suffering is ignored.

How many women in our country are being crucified in backstreet abortions? How many children are being brought into being because their mothers have to sell their bodies? And they are being born into a society without social support structures. The suffering of mothers and unwanted children cannot be described within the boundaries of language.

Whenever Jesus was challenged on theological principles, his answer was compassion and love. Compassion and love translated into the reality of our country means to call for legislation on termination of pregnancy.

As Christians we support the legalisation of abortion because of our faith, but we support this step with sadness, trembling and shame, because we have failed to build a society in which a dignified life for everyone can be ensured.

To speak out against abortion in our context is merciless and cruel towards those who labour and are heavy-laden. I appeal to our Christian political leaders to please open their hearts to the suffering of the poorest, poor women in distress. Let the poor women have the same right to an individual conscience as the rich women who can afford a ticket to Europe.

For every woman it is painful to have to consider an abortion. She will not take the decision lightly, knowing that the grief of her unborn child will remain a constant companion. Only the prochoice legal framework enables the individual woman to wrestle with the decision as a matter between her and God.

Mr Chairperson, I rise, as the chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Health, to report on the committee’s consideration of the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Bill, and to outline the key areas in which the Bill has been altered. A number of late amendments have been tabled by the NP, and the committee will be meeting immediately after this debate to consider them.

Since the committee’s work is not quite finished, I shall not detail the elaborate technical amendments tabled, nor list every vote taken. Instead, I want to assure the House that as soon as the committee’s work is completed, we will make all relevant details, including formal objections, widely available. Given that the NP’s proposals render me unable to give a full and final chairperson’s report, I wish to divide my comments this afternoon into two parts.

Firstly, as chairperson of the committee, I would like to convey the flavour and format of our work on this important legislation, and to offer some insight as to how the amendments, as they currently stand, have been arrived at. Secondly, with the permission of the Chair, I wish to change hats midspeech and explain, as the chairman of the ANC’s health study group, precisely why we believe that this Bill is fundamental to the health and welfare of South African women and families.

As members are aware, the Department of Health was guided in its drafting of the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Bill by the work of the Ad Hoc Select Committee on Abortion and Sterilisation which sat throughout 1995. That committee engaged in the widest possible consultation before making its recommendations to Parliament. As a result of this, the portfolio committee came under pressure to restrict its consideration of this matter merely to technical strategies of implementation. We chose not to take that route, as we believed that public input during an ad hoc process of inquiry should not be used as an excuse to restrict comment and debate on a specific piece of legislation.

In addition to considering a large volume of written submissions, every applicant who approached the committee within the stipulated deadline was given the chance to make his or her views known. Submissions ranged from those of village churches to those of Cosatu, representing 1,8 million workers. A particular word of acknowledgement is owed to those individual women who told their own, often harrowing, stories before the committee.

Following 90 oral submissions over three full days of public hearings, the portfolio committee spent a further four days deliberating on the Bill and, ultimately, considering amendments. To the extent that I am able to discuss this matter, I want to assure the House that the committee’s work has been profoundly informed by public input and comment.

Thus, for example, we have opted to support the department’s proposal that no ultimate obligation should be placed on a minor to seek parental consent for an abortion. Whilst such consultation will be automatic for many families and is actively encouraged in the Bill, the testimony of young survivors of rape and abuse persuaded the majority of committee members of the necessity of retaining this clause.

Where health workers are concerned, the committee has heeded the sentiments expressed by organisations such as Doctors for Life, who argued that a statutory obligation to refer a patient to another doctor would constitute complicity for some health workers opposed to abortion. We have therefore deleted the original clause 8 and wish to stress instead the importance of women’s right to access information on available services.

On counselling, NGOs such as Pro-Life and the Reproductive Rights Alliance emphasised the need for nondirective support and guidance. As members will see, this viewpoint has been accommodated.

With regard to access, individual women and many representative organisations stressed the barriers caused by limited infrastructure. The committee has therefore voted to remove the need for a second professional opinion in the case of terminations between the 13th and 20th weeks of gestation.

It is important to acknowledge that a large number of amendments have not been passed consensually, but on a majority vote. Details will be made available and I am sure that colleagues from other parties will shed more light on their own positions.

Turning now to the position of the ANC study group on health, my first point is that our philosophy about this Bill is the ANC’s commitment to choice—not to abortion, not to one particular set of morals, but just to freedom of choice for the women of this country.

In South Africa today, no such choice exists for many women with unplanned pregnancies. Poverty and lack of social support mean that often they cannot continue a pregnancy to term and support a child in a dignified manner. In addition, because they do not have access to safe legal termination services, they are forced onto the backstreets for abortions. In their desperation, they place their lives and health, as well as those of their families, at risk.

This Bill offers choice, but we must ensure that it is a meaningful choice. We are committed to reducing levels of unplanned and unwanted pregnancy, and, crucially, we are committed to making it a real choice for women to continue a pregnancy to term with the means to raise a child in a caring and stable environment.

Secondly, at many stages in our deliberations the NP has criticised what it terms the narrowness of this Bill. They have questioned its focus on termination of pregnancy. They have argued that it should deal with all reproductive health matters, such as contraceptive services, sexuality education, counselling and prenatal and postnatal care. They tried to suggest that passing this Bill meant that we were not committed to these aspects of reproductive health. Frankly, this is a bit rich coming from the party which refused for decades to heed the calls of women and of health professionals.I would like to stress that the ANC is deeply committed to a comprehensive reproductive health policy. The preamble to the Bill sets out the basis of this framework. However, an area such as contraceptive services is the subject not of legislation, but of policy. We really must strive for a more educated political debate in this country. We are trying to involve our people in governance— or at least some of us are.

Thirdly, in the past two weeks, many amendments to the Bill have been proposed by various opposition parties. The ANC study group views many of these as formalistic legal amendments which do not reflect the socioeconomic realities of our society and the present disadvantage created by apartheid rule.

The NP opposed the clause allowing minors in a difficult situation to consent to their own terminations. They refused to acknowledge that we live in a society where children are forced to make adult decisions. Our children made such decisions in 1976 and generations of children, before and since, have been forced into the same position. This is the reality that they created for us—a society with many children who are victims of war, children who do not have parents to assist them in making their decisions and children who live in conditions of abject misery and abuse. This is the reality which we are trying to deal with, as constructively as possible, in this Bill.

Since the elections the ANC’s position has been reaffirmed by the recommendations of the 1995 Ad Hoc Select Committee on Abortion and Sterilisation. It has been enshrined in our Constitution which provides for the right to make reproductive decisions and for physical autonomy, and it has been confirmed by our status as a signatory to a number of international agreements such as the Cairo Programme of Action and the Beijing Platform of Action.

Nobody is suggesting for a moment that we have a flawless democracy and yet I firmly believe that the portfolio committee has contributed to the development of a true people’s Parliament over the past two weeks. This is the framework in which the Bill is introduced. It is something we have grappled with over a number of years. We have listened to the people and today we are confident that this Bill will improve the lives of millions of South Africans. After decades of oppression the women of this country are to have freedom of choice. They are to have tolerance and care and the respect they deserve.

Mr Chairperson, the NP’s objection to the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Bill rests on two separate legs and therefore applies to two separate aspects of the Bill. We are taking legal advice on a possible constitutional challenge based on both these aspects.

Unfortunately the Rules of Parliament preclude us from tabling this amendment again today. However, we are tabling amendments in connection with this aspect of our opposition to the preamble of the Bill, which the ANC loaded onto the Bill at the last minute.

We have taken advice to the effect that as things stand now, in terms of the present interim Constitution, there is no protection of the right of persons to control over their bodies. This right, which the NP has opposed throughout in the Constitutional Assembly, is included in the Bill of Rights of the final Constitution, but it is not yet part of our law. We believe therefore that it would be incorrect for this Parliament to agree to its inclusion in the preamble today. In other words, in this connection we are proposing the first amendment on the Order Paper.

We believe that the ulterior purpose of the ANC in pushing this Bill through is to use it for family planning, in spite of the fact that South Africa is party to an international agreement reached in Cairo two years ago which does not countenance abortion on demand or for family planning purposes. We therefore suggest the amendments to the preamble under our third amendment on the Order Paper.

In this connection I would just like to stress the point that the NP is for improved access to legal abortion for all South African women, and for this reason we have supported amendments that include as a ground for legal abortion the fact that a pregnancy has resulted from statutory rape, ie sex with a girl under 16, together with other grounds, as well as allowing a medical practitioner to perform the abortion without the necessity for consultation with another doctor or midwife, except after 20 weeks, and allowing midwives to perform a legal abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

As far as the other leg of our opposition is concerned, it is based on our view that this is a badly drafted, impractical and unconstitutional piece of legislation. We agree with the organised medical profession that there was inadequate consultation with the main role-players about the controversial provisions of this Bill. Together with them, we accuse the hon the Minister of pushing headlong into legislation when she knows that the health services will probably not be able to cope with the added burden of free abortions on demand at State hospitals, when she knows that to date not a single midwife in the country has undergone the so-called prescribed training referred to in the Bill, and when she knows that this training course has not yet been finalised. No one in her department could tell the Portfolio Committee on Health with certainty how long the training would last, which midwives would be eligible to undergo it and where it would be offered. In other words, we are being asked to legislate into a vacuum. The Forum of University Nursing Departments has launched an urgent appeal over the weekend for the provisions of this Bill affecting midwives to be reconsidered.

It is true that some of the NP amendments tabled right at the start of the portfolio committee’s deliberations were accepted by the ANC. This includes the removal of the offensive clause requiring doctors and midwives with a conscientious objection to performing an abortion to refer the patient on pain of punishment to a doctor or midwife who would be prepared to perform it. This clause would clearly have been an infringement of the constitutional right of freedom of conscience and belief.

However, in agreeing to remove this clause, the ANC threw the baby out with the bathwater and also removed the clause in the Bill which protected medical personnel of the Department of Health who are not prepared to perform these abortions. Therefore the NP proposes new amendments to clause 6, as on the Order Paper. In our proposed clause dealing with rights, such as the rights of women to information and the rights of children to parental care, we also spell out the protection of these medical staff members against discrimination on this ground, just to finally dispel their anxiety and uncertainty.

It must be noted that the Department of Health is adopting an entirely new policy which directly impacts on the beliefs and feelings of what is probably a majority of its medical personnel, to judge from the faxes and phone calls that I personally have received from representative bodies in the medical profession during the past few days.The NP is particularly concerned that the provision which allows doctors and midwives to perform an abortion on a minor without the necessity of advising the parents constitutes an infringement of the child’s right to parental care in terms of the Constitution. This is on the basis that the parents, or indeed the family of the minor, will be unable to exercise or offer the care that is the child’s right to receive if they are deprived of information by the medical personnel who are responsible for performing this procedure.

We believe that it is insufficient to provide that these medical personnel must merely advise the child—the Constitution specifically defines a child as someone under the age of 18 years—to consult her parents. The Constitution affords special protection and rights to children, specifically because they are not responsible adults able to look after themselves. It does not help matters to try to redefine girl-children as women in legislation, as the Bill attempts to do, because the Constitution overrides that.

The ANC rejected our amendment, offered in the portfolio committee, by which we attempted to rectify this position, and, accordingly, we have come with a new amendment under clause 6 which, we suggest, should cater for the rights of all of those concerned—women, children and medical staff—to the effect that children’s rights must be respected and upheld when these abortion procedures are carried out. This is referred to in our amendments to clause 6 on the Order Paper. We have also introduced an amendment to clause 7 to ensure that medical staff are obliged to record their advice to minors, provided for under clause 5.

Another important amendment which we are offering to clause 5 is aimed at patching up the draft of the clause dealing with consent to abortion when the pregnant woman is mentally disabled or in a coma. We do not disagree with the ANC substantively on this clause, because the NP has always supported this as a legal ground for abortion. However, we do not believe that the ANC’s draft, which was submitted at the last minute, and repeatedly amended up to the last minute, with insufficient thought, achieves this objective. We have two problems with it. We do not believe that when such a woman is pregnant as a result of rape or incest, the curator or legal guardian of such a woman should be in a position to insist that the pregnancy go to term, and that the child be born in circumstances in which it would have no hope of family or parental care, particularly in the light of what the Minister has just told Parliament. We are also surprised that when all the family members have consented to the abortion, the doctors concerned should be in a position to withhold their consent unless there are medical reasons for the abortion. I am sure that the ANC did not intend this, but our advice is that this is what their draft says. Our amendments tabled today attempt to rectify this position.

In view of the concerns expressed by the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa and the Forum of University Nursing Departments, once the ill-considered intentions of the ANC became clear, we suggest an amendment to ensure that at any institution, designated by the Minister for the performance of abortions involving surgical procedures, there must be a medical practitioner available and willing to perform or to supervise the performance of or procedure in connection with the abortion. In the proceedings of the Portfolio Committee on Health, personnel of the Minister’s department did, in fact, tell the committee that this would be the case. But we believe that this is not enough and that the Bill should specifically provide for this.

Finally, on consideration, we agree with the DP that clause 2(1)(b)(iv) is too vague, and our amendments to the clause on the Order Paper do attempt to rectify this.

Mr Chairperson, the IFP, recognising and respecting its plural constituency, is allowing its members to vote according to their individual consciences. However, the party has stated clearly that it opposes the principle of abortion on demand. Yet we do not reject abortion out of hand, but seek to have it granted with clear qualifications.It is often claimed that the response to abortion falls into two camps, those who are prochoice and those who are prolife, and that there is no reconciling the opposite viewpoints. We disagree and sought legislation which would strike a balance between the two extremes.

In our approach to this Bill we did not dictate morality, but we confronted our responsibility to promote safety, respect for life and individual responsibility of South African women and children. Our policy sets limits within which society could achieve a balanced approach to abortion. This Bill does not achieve such a balance. It is largely a reaction to the apartheid past rather than an investment in the future. Therefore, it concentrates on women’s rights and access to abortion.

However, abortion is not only about women’s rights. It is also about responsibility, morality, safety and health. No one should be able to deny a woman the right to equality, privacy, dignity and freedom of the person. The Constitution protects these rights. However, no right is absolute. In helping women to exercise their rights, ought we not also to encourage them to be responsible?

The reality of the South African situation which results in 13 000 women each year presenting at hospitals with incomplete abortions, either spontaneous or induced, must be the starting point for any abortion legislation. This figure of 13 000 suggests that at least 20 000 backstreet abortions are being performed with no control over the stage of pregnancy or safety and health of the women. Pontification will not end this unacceptable situation, and it must be coped with through legislation.

However, the claim that all abortions amount to killing is debatable. There is no consensus, either historically, clerically, scientifically or medically about the moment when life begins. In the Jewish religion a child born to a mother following a miscarriage of a less than 40-day-old fetus is regarded as the woman’s first child. The Bible establishes the norm that all life is sacred, which we as IFP members support, but it is people who claim that abortion constitutes murder.

While people have differing viewpoints on the beginning of life, we can pinpoint the moment of birth and predict viability when the fetus can be kept alive outside of the womb. Admittedly this varies, but it is definitely way after the 12th week and some time after the 21st week. There is potential for life in a sperm and an egg. A fertilised egg becomes a zygote, many of which fail to implant on the uterine wall and are naturally flushed away. Research suggests that only a third of all zygotes survive. We do not perceive nature as killing babies.

Some forms of contraception such as intrauterine devices and the birth control pill prevent the fertilised egg from becoming implanted. Therefore, to be consistent, anyone who objects to the termination of pregnancy even at the earlier stages on the grounds that it is killing should also object to contraception and to in vitro fertilisation where some embryos are discarded.

The question of life therefore is open to debate. However, one cannot argue about viability, which at the present time is at about 21 weeks. The IFP proposes that a clear distinction should be made between the first, second and third trimester with regard to checks placed on a woman. Where there is chance of viability, and the health of the woman or the fetus is at stake, at least have consultation with one other medical practitioner. The Bill does not provide for this and allows abortion virtually on demand to be carried out even in the second trimester by a doctor.

The argument that any pause placed on a woman who requests an abortion is a denial of her right is one that we reject. Requiring a woman’s decision about her present and her future to be responsible and not casual is not obstructing her freedom to choose.

Therefore the IFP requested an amendment to the effect that before any abortion a woman should receive counselling telling her of the stage of development of the fetus in relation to its viability, future safe sexual practices and other options available to her. This would balance rights with responsibility. Such counselling would imply respect for the pregnant woman as a human being who needs to make an important choice in a difficult situation. Instead, the Bill regards her as a mechanical object with a fetus that must be removed. The same mechanical, almost callous, response is shown to a minor. A young pregnant child may well be terrified at the prospect of approaching her parents. Advising her to do so will not help matters.

The IFP proposed that at least the doctor or a trained midwife should make reasonable efforts, after consultation with the minor, to obtain approval from the parent or guardian. Instead, the Bill leaves her alone in her predicament and may well encourage her to lie, to trivialise her situation and to be equally irresponsible in future. The contentious clause, which would have requested conscientious objectors to refer a woman to a doctor who would perform an abortion, has been removed. But it is not certain that there will be tolerance of plural morality.

The Bill now requires that a woman be informed of her rights by a dissenting doctor. Why should the Gender Commission or the Constitutional Court not be confronted with instances of women claiming precedence for their right to freedom of the person over a doctor’s or a midwife’s right to freedom of conscience, particularly in smaller clinics and hospitals which are not staffed with consenting practitioners? We would have preferred the Bill to state clearly that conscientious objectors should be respected and protected.

As a legislator, a doctor and a mother, I believe that we should try to promote respect for the intrinsic value of human life. We should also promote responsible sex practices and a moral environment in which practitioners care about their patients and in which decisions about life and death are taken seriously. This Bill fails to do that. I hope that it will, at some future time, be amended to be more balanced and more humane. Representing the IFP, I voted against it in the committee.

Mr Chairman, today I am standing in this House with great concern in my heart. I wonder whether we here in Parliament really understand what we are engaged in debating.

I want to start by saying that the FF rejects the Bill which provides that women may obtain abortions on demand. The FF does not support the Bill, because it amounts to the murder of innocent and defenceless unborn children. For that reason the FF will vote unanimously against this Bill.

As I have already said, I am concerned. Do we really understand what the consequences are of the Bill which must be agreed to by Parliament today? There are so many arguments. So much time was devoted to the Bill and all the submissions by the ad hoc committee. My concern is that all the submissions did not change the Bill one iota. From the outset there was an agenda, and that agenda was followed. Was the opportunity to make submissions given to create the impression among the public that there was transparency and that they were being given an opportunity to have a say in the Bill? Is this a new kind of democracy where one listens, but does not hear? That is what concerns me today.

What also does me credit, is that today I can stand here as an intercessor of the unborn baby. Today we are not dealing with the choices of a woman and whether it is her right to exercise choices in connection with her own body. Today we are debating the right of the unborn baby to live, to have the opportunity to see the light of day and to see the sun shine. There was no argument in the submissions which were made by all the doctors and all the specialists that it was not a life, and the unborn baby is being deprived of that life.

The argument with which the hon the Minister opened, namely that abortions do take place and that for this reason we must legalise them, is an argument full of pitfalls. If we legalise theft, murders will not take place during thefts. Something cannot be legalised simply because it takes place. We must find other ways of combating it. For that reason it is totally unacceptable to us to think that anyone can say that it is her body, but she is deciding on someone else’s life and begrudges him the chance to live.

I do not want to go into particulars on the Bill, but I do want to refer to a few clauses in the legislation. The first is the one which points out the difference between the termination of a pregnancy at 12 weeks and that at 20 weeks. There is absolutely no difference. It is not worth the paper it is written on. The only difference between the termination of a pregnancy at 12 weeks and that at 20 weeks is that the termination of a pregnancy at 12 weeks may be undertaken by a midwife and that at 20 weeks must be undertaken by a doctor. That is the only difference.

Now we come to the issue of the child in the Bill. If a 14 year old child is pregnant, she is treated like an adult. She need not obtain her parents’ permission. In ordinary legislation a child cannot even undergo a tonsil operation without the permission of the parents, but in terms of this legislation a 14 year old, emotionally immature child can decide on the life of someone else. This is in shrill contrast to what is going on in South Africa. A mature, trained judge with experience may not even decide on the life of a murderer, but an immature child can decide on the life of an unborn child. This goes against the spirit of the times.

Today you are making a good speech!

That is because I am leaving that hon member out.

I should like to issue a word of warning to the doctors of South Africa in connection with this Bill. I want to ask who is going to accept responsibility if there are complications after an abortion is performed on a minor child. If the parents of that child come back and institute a case against them because complications arose in the sense that she will not be able to have children in future or that her life is in danger, who is going to accept responsibility for that?

To me the worst provision in the Bill is that a woman can decide at 20 weeks that the child will prejudice her socially or economically. In other words, at 20 weeks she can decide that she does not have food for the child or that she is going to lose her job. Surely it cries out to high heaven to agree to something like this in this Parliament. Virtually everyone sitting here belongs to some or other religion. I have been told that 80% of the people in this country are Christians. Is this the kind of legislation we want to agree to in this country? A mother can decide that she is going to lose her job and for that reason she can have a five month old unborn child murdered.

Today I want to address myself to the women and mothers in this House.

Mr Chairperson ...

Order!

Mr Chairman, he wants to waste my time.

I have said that I am standing here today and I am grateful for the opportunity to be able to act as the intercessor for the unborn child. The murderer gets an advocate to defend him at State expense, but the unborn child has no one. Everyone is speaking against him.

Now you are ruining a very good speech!

That hon member does not understand!

Mr Chairman, in supporting this Bill the DP is supporting the fundamental democratic exercise of choice. To be prochoice does not mean that we are proabortion. It means that we support leaving the decision about abortion to the woman, her doctor and her God.

Though our support for the Bill is qualified, our support for a woman’s right to choose is not. The following constitutional guarantees apply: freedom from coercion, freedom to make decisions concerning reproduction, the right to privacy and freedom of conscience, religion, thought, belief and opinion. South Africa’s new Constitution prohibits both the State and the majority of the population from imposing its collective will on our citizens.

The individual liberties established and protected by the Bill of Rights are meeting their first test today. Our vote is affirming the constitutional right of a woman to make choices about the very private matter of reproduction. It is a precondition of legitimate democracy that Government be required to treat individual citizens as equals and to respect their fundamental liberties and dignity. Unless these conditions are met, there can be no genuine democracy, because unless they are met, the majority has no legitimate moral title to govern.

Further, the new Constitution will guarantee the right to privacy, and as American supreme court justice Harry Blackman wrote:

If the right to privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as a decision whether to bear or beget a child.

Some may argue that there are occasions when the individual is legitimately coerced by the Government, but the effect of coercing pregnant women is far greater than that involved in protecting art or historic buildings or endangered animal species. Our beliefs about human life are decisive in forming our opinions about all life-and-death matters.

Another crucial question is whether the State can impose the majority’s conception of the sacred on everyone. Doctrinal religious arguments do not count as legal arguments. Further, the law protecting the right to life does not generally require people to make a sacrifice in order to save the life of another person.

We must insist on religious tolerance in this area, as in other areas about which people once cared just as passionately, and once thought sufficiently important to wage not just protests and marches, but wars. Tolerance is a cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty.

Afurther issue which the DP has debated at length is whether it is right, in the cold reality of day, for us to adopt a position towards the Bill that might be suitable for Western standards and highly industrialised societies, without taking into account the lives that people, especially women and young girls, lead in such areas as squatter camps and townships. Much of the evidence heard by the Portfolio Committee on Health placed enormous emphasis on the quality of life in these areas, where young girls, and women in general, as a result of both customs and circumstances, find themselves pregnant, often against their will.

The number of teenage pregnancies in South Africa is shocking. The DP fully believes that every effort must be made to extend sex education, including reproductive health education, into every area, every school and every home in South Africa. We pledge ourselves to support every effort in this regard in order to cut down the number of unwanted pregnancies. But there is the cold reality that this is a long, slow process, and even then the abuse of women and their rights, through rape and incest alone, is likely to be a problem for a long time to come.

The DP believes that it would be ideal for us to have a system of social workers and mandatory counselling in place so that women of all ages could receive the right advice at the right time from people fully trained in this area of work. We also believe that it is important to have in place a battery of checks, balances and barriers before a minor has an abortion. But, again, the reality on the ground is starkly different, and there is no possibility that such a process will be in place for years to come. Social workers and counsellors are in such scarce numbers in areas where they are needed that their impact is hardly felt at all.

Similarly, many people believe that unwanted babies should be carried to term, and that various voluntary and Government organisations will then step in to take care of them. It is, again, a sad, cold truth that this does not happen, and consequently we continually face the predicament of unwanted babies being abandoned and assaulted every day, of full orphanages, and of adoptive parents not coming forward. We simply do not have the capacity to cope with the situation in this country.

These are the realities of the South African situation, and it is for all these reasons that we will be voting in favour of this legislation since it affords the right to women to choose for themselves whether to terminate their pregnancies or not.

Let me add that this does not mean that we totally accept all aspects of this Bill. We remain concerned, for example, about the fact that the conscientious objection clause, as it applied to doctors and midwives, has been removed on the basis that the Constitution makes provision for their objections. We believe that medical practitioners and midwives who object to the termination of pregnancies on the grounds of conscience may find themselves severely pressured by the removal of this section from the Bill. This will need to be monitored very carefully indeed.

Further, we are concerned that, while Parliament might pass this legislation this week, resources, both human and physical, are not in place to cope with the possible increase in the number of requests for the termination of pregnancies. It is a fact that the types of facilities required to perform a termination of pregnancy safely are not readily available in rural communities. Also, the direct impact on midwifery facilities will be an excessive strain on already severely limited resources. Maternity services are already thinly stretched owing to free health care for pregnant women and for children under six years old, in fact by health care for all. Further, we are concerned about the possible costs involved if the number of terminations increases. We are concerned that proper costings have not yet been done, and this might impact badly on our health services generally.

Mr Chairperson, I am participating in this debate today as the Chief Whip of the PAC. I want to explain our vote. Comrade Patricia de Lille will deal with the details of the Bill.

Termination of pregnancy is one of the most divisive and difficult issues on which to find unanimity. It raises ethical, religious, political and legal considerations. This Bill has touched on all these sensitive issues and has created divisions and disagreements.

The PAC, as an organisation, is not immune to all of this. Alively and raging debate is still going on within the organisation. Some members say that we must abstain, while others say that we must vote against the Bill, and some even say that voting for this Bill is the only way to go. There are differing opinions on all these matters. All these opinions are important and reflect the seriousness and difficulty of the issue of abortion, and it does not help when an organisation does not have a clear and definitive position on the matter.

Having said all this, let me add that the PAC is not a religious organisation, although many of its members belong to various religious organisations. It is not a traditionalist movement, although there are traditionalists within it. It is not a liberal nor a communist movement, although these elements are accommodated in it. It is a political organisation and an Africanist movement that stands for the interests of the African people.

Therefore the issues facing the organisation are, firstly, whether this Bill is against the interests of the African people or not, and, secondly, whether we should allow moral considerations to override the realities of African life in present day South Africa. These are the two issues that confronted first the PAC parliamentary caucus and then the NEC of the PAC on 26 October 1996. It must be said that at the end of both meetings and debates, both bodies were not unanimous on the issue of giving women a right to choose to abort or not. There were strong views on either side. In addition there was a strong recognition of the fact that this matter was sensitive and that the organisation must continue debating it for some time.

We were also confronted by the stark reality that in 1994 alone 45 000 women underwent illegal and incomplete abortions and, of these, 84% were Africans, 425 of whom died and 12 847 of whom had permanent health complications. This is a reality of modern-day South Africa. Do we, then, have the luxury to ignore all this in pursuit of moral self-indulgence?

This matter is also political, and we are a political organisation. We have subsequently received advice that the PAC must abstain. While we respect these views, we cannot afford to be neutral in a matter that impacts so negatively on African lives. We would also like to add that when the decision to support the Bill was finalised in the NEC, the African women’s organisation representatives fully agreed with that decision. Therefore, this afternoon we will do just that and vote favour of a Bill that gives women a choice. This Bill does not enforce abortion.

This Bill discriminates against the unborn babies because of their age and their place of residence. It is not about improving the status of women, as no one can truly improve their status by becoming a murderer of innocent, defenceless children. Legalised abortion on demand is against the will of the majority of South Africans, and against the right of unborn children to life.

Because the ANC and its allies are not able to counter the arguments of those who believe in the sanctity of life, they have resorted to threats and steamrolling tactics. Following the wide media coverage of the anti-abortion protests, attempts were made to discredit them by linking them with American groups —

. . . responsible for acts of terror against prochoice organisations and individuals.

The chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Health, Dr Abe Nkomo, began to voice fears that—

. . . certain right-wing South African church groups were being bankrolled by American extremist anti-abortion groups known to be behind violent attacks on organisations and individuals in that country.

It is also not true that prolife organisations requested nonmandatory and nondirective counselling from the State. Counselling from the State that promotes abortion on demand will always be directive. Prolife organisations requested the right to give counsel and all information to those requiring an abortion.

Will clause 10 also be used against medical aids which refuse to pay for abortions? The ACDP calls on all medical aids whose consciences are not yet dead or seared with a hot iron to refuse to pay for the slaughter of innocent babies. Let us allow these babies to grow and help build the new South Africa. Before we can talk about the right to choose, let us talk about the right to life. We choose today because we were given the right to life.

In the USA abortion increased sixteenfold when it was legalised. Dr Christopher Tietze, an abortion advocate, concedes, and I quote:

Although one of the major goals of abortion laws in Scandinavia was to reduce the incidence of illegal abortion, this was not accomplished. Rather, as we know from a variety of sources, both criminal and total abortions increased.

The new ANC Government is debating the killing of unborn children on demand, unborn children that could be destined to become great men and women of this country, who could even become members of Parliament in the future. This Government will accelerate the already rapid erosion of morality in South Africa because legal abortion, the brutal, cold-blooded, skilful, antiseptic murder of helpless, innocent unborn infants, will become normal practice and will be tyrannically protected by the ANC Government.

By promoting the brutal killing of unborn children, the State itself becomes the main instrument, perpetrator and protector of violence and murder in South Africa, and becomes a direct and lethal aggressor against the only real future of any nation—its children.

The ANC Government will force taxpayers to become accessories to murder without in any way enabling taxpayers to avoid being unwilling accessories to the abominable crime of abortion. Members of the medical aid funds will be forced to pay doctors for killing these babies and to subsidise the ‘‘abortuaries’’, both public and private, where unborn children will be murdered. They will furthermore pay these professional killers of children and the proprietors of the death chambers where they will be killed at the same scale of benefits as for surgery intended to restore health and to preserve life.

With the national health services already collapsing, the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Bill can also demoralise many people in the medical profession. Doctors and nurses who do not wish ...

Mr Chairman, I would like to know whether the hon member will take a question.

Doctors and nurses who do not wish to participate in the termination of pregnancies should be protected in the proposed legislation itself.

This Bill could destroy the profession of medicine, which is founded on the principle of reverence for life, by forcing nurses to be accessories to the killing of unborn children. The Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Bill mocks the oath taken by nurses. There should be a clause in the Bill stating clearly that any health personnel who refuse to participate in terminations should not be prosecuted or discriminated against in any way whatsoever.

I hereby express my concern and the concern of my party at the inadequate time for consultation with and by nurses. The Government process of consultation creates room for concern amongst many people in this country. We can expect major implications in the education of nurses. The staffing levels in nursing educational institutions, particularly nursing colleges, where the majority of nurses are educated, are at critical levels, and the requirements of this Bill would place additional demands on them in the training of young adults.

Students enter the nursing and midwifery professions at a fairly young age in South Africa. This is a highly impressionable and vulnerable time for them developmentally. Students are service providers and are therefore inevitably exposed, early in their training, to patients who have experienced major trauma in their lives, both physical and psychological. In addition to this, being exposed to women having their pregnancies terminated will potentially have psycho-emotional effects on the student nurses and midwives. Few nurses’ colleges have nurse counsellors, and the lack of these resources for the support of these young students, many of whom have moral objections, is a great concern to society and most probably to nurse educators as well.

Midwives especially are health professionals, who most intimately deal with nurturing a pregnancy towards a successful outcome or birth. For nurses and midwives to be charged with assisting in or being responsible for terminating a pregnancy, I believe, will undermine the trust that women have in them, and such trust forms the cornerstone of medical and midwifery practice.

Mr Chairperson, the very first question I asked Minister Zuma in Parliament in 1994 was when the Department of Health would be reviewing the unconstitutional and discriminatory Abortion and Sterilisation Act of 1975. I am pleased to have the final answer today in the form of the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Bill.

I want to look at how the Bill complies with our constitutional framework and our international obligations, particularly in regard to reproductive rights. In terms of our constitutional framework, which is the supreme law of our country, the normative key features are equality, dignity and freedom, embodied in clause 1 of Chapter 1, the Founding Provisions, of our new Constitution.

Clause 7(1) states that the Bill of Rights is a cornerstone of democracy in South Africa. It enshrines the rights of all people in our country and affirms the democratic values of human dignity, equality and freedom.

Reproductive rights are those rights that protect the reproductive health of both men and women. Reproductive rights are particularly important to women, because only when armed with these rights can women effectively exercise the rest of their rights and act as full and equal members of our society. In a narrow sense, reproductive rights require respect for women’s bodily integrity and decision-making in an environment which is free from fear of abuse, violence and intimidation. They also require access to voluntary quality reproductive and sexual health information, education and services. In a broader sense, reproductive rights may be linked to the provision of social and economic necessities such as food, shelter, child care and education.

Our interim Constitution contains a number of reproductive rights which protect and promote reproductive health. Several of these can be used to ensure that South African women have the constitutionally protected right to terminate their pregnancies. These rights include the rights to equality, privacy, freedom and security of the person, and freedom of conscience, life and dignity.

Our 1996 Constitution goes much further and clearly spells out the reproductive rights of women. Section 9, the equality clause, outlaws direct or indirect discrimination against anyone on one or more grounds, and also on the grounds of pregnancy. This provision recognises that although men and women have different biological roles in relation to reproduction, women are sometimes disadvantaged by the social consequences of pregnancy and child-bearing. Motherhood, especially to single parents, has added responsibilities which are burdensome and inhibit women’s full participation in all spheres of society.

In section 10 the issue of human dignity is closely tied to the issue of life. However, life should not be perceived in the narrow sense of existence, the human rights discourse being more concerned with the quality of life of the person than just existence.

Section 12 is the provision which deals with freedom and security of the person and provides for reproductive rights which are crucial to women. The section guarantees bodily and psychological integrity which specifically includes the right to make decisions concerning reproduction and to freedom, security and control of our bodies. The right to freedom and security of the person includes the strongest statement of reproductive rights in the Constitution. The right to make decisions concerning reproduction is crucial for women’s rights.

Section 14 of our Constitution leaves the choice to the individual to make a decision about the most intimate issue of one’s life in the absence of external influence and interference. The right should be interpreted to include a woman’s right to make a wide range of decisions when her health is involved. This includes decisions in relation to family planning, prenatal care, safe delivery and postnatal care, reproductive infections, sexually transmitted diseases and termination of pregnancy.

Section 15 has, of course, more than one dimension. On the one side it may be argued that it supports the so-called prolife stance on religious grounds while, on the flipside, the right would equally entitle the choice to be left to individuals according to their consciences.

The preamble to the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Bill recognises that the decision to have children is fundamental to women’s physical, psychological and social health, and that universal access to reproductive health care services includes family planning, contraception, termination of pregnancies and sex education, as well as counselling programmes and services. The Constitution does not expressly provide for the right to abortion on request. However, it does provide a regulatory framework which should be interpreted to include a woman’s right to choose safe and legal abortion.

Section 27 of the Constitution provides a right of access to reproductive health care services. This right must be meaningful and progressive. Steps must be taken by Government to ensure access to health care services. The implementation of this Bill is one of the steps along this road. Reproductive rights and health do not end with the provision of health care services, but must extend to the improvement of the socioeconomic conditions of all South African women.

The status of women in relation to men has to be increased. To this end the Constitution includes a number of socioeconomic rights, including the right to housing, food, water, social security and education. These rights must be used as tools to ensure the empowerment of all South African women.

South Africa has certain international obligations to comply with in regard to reproductive health and rights. We have ratified CEDAW, which provides in article 16(1) that states must ensure that women have the same rights to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children, to have access to education and means to enable them to exercise these rights.

We are also party to the Cairo and Beijing Programmes of Action. The reproductive rights were extended at Cairo and Beijing to include the right of all individuals to decide freely and responsibly on the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health. It also includes the right to make decisions concerning reproduction free of discrimination, coercion and violence as expressed in the human rights documents. At Beijing South Africa promised to review its punitive abortion legislation and we have kept this promise today.

The right to health is also an internationally recognised basic human right. Articles 10 and 12 of CEDAW, like section 27 of our Constitution, protect reproductive health. Similarly, article 12 of CEDAW is concerned both with family planning and the provision of appropriate services in connection with pregnancy, including adequate nutrition during pregnancy and lactation. The international human rights framework has increasingly recognised and protected reproductive rights. Reproductive rights have acquired the status of universally accepted fundamental rights.

Mr Chairperson, colleagues and friends, when I read the words of the Catholic Church this morning and when I hear the dogma of the ACDP and the NP, the words of that great Being of compassion and love are a source of comfort. I quote:

Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone.

The NP opposes the Bill on the grounds that it believes abortion is morally wrong and unconstitutional.

The total cost of treating incomplete backstreet abortions arising directly from that Bill of 1975 was R18,5 million per year. The Bill we are debating today extends choice and access to all women, rich or poor, African, Indian, coloured or white. It rests on the principle that the lives of all women are valuable, not just some women. It is located in the context of a comprehensive reproductive health care programme which, from 1993 to 1994, saw the number of condoms distributed, together with other contraceptives, being doubled, 2 500 clinics upgraded and 186 new clinics built, sex education programmes being introduced in schools from Std 5 upwards, etc.

We all know someone who has been raped or abused. We all know of South Africa’s endemic violence against women. The 1992 figures of the SA Police Service’s Child Protection Unit reported over 15 000 cases of child abuse. With the culture of silence and shame that exists around this issue, how many more cases are not reported? Eighty-five per cent of all reported cases were female, babies, children and adolescents. In 60% of these cases the violators were trusted family members—fathers and uncles—who were supposed to care for them and not to violate them. Who are we to cast the first stone to add to the violence that these young children have been submitted to by giving them no choice to continue to live as children, by clothing them in sin and shame and silence, by demanding that they consult those who so often have caused this bitter grief?

Mr Chairperson, the aim and objective of the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Bill is clearly to reduce the high birth rate amongst South Africans and thereby improve their standard of living. I, for one, and my party agree that the only way to improve living standards in South Africa is to improve our economy and introduce an effective system of responsible family planning. However, we in the NP are totally opposed to the use of abortion as a method of birth control.

Rapid population growth in a developing nation such as ours certainly hinders economic development. The human population grows at a geometric rate—2, 4, 8, 16, etc—while food supplies increase at an arithmetic rate—2, 3, 5 and so on. The ANC Government has realised and recognised, as we all do, the serious problems of overpopulation, and it is the duty of us all to control that population growth through fertility control programmes, not by murdering our future generations. The use of effective fertility control is the only key to reducing the size of our population.

According to a British report released only last week by the Commission of Inquiry into Foetal Sentience, which means the power of perception by the senses of the foetus, leading experts in the field of obstetrics have agreed that an unborn baby can experience pain from as young as six weeks. In this modern day and age animals are rendered unconscious before slaughter at abattoirs, yet unborn babies are crushed, pulverised, liquidised and sucked out of women’s wombs.

We should become a country with a declining birth rate and low death rate, like Taiwan, Chile and Argentina, but we must achieve this not by murdering our unborn infants, but by embarking on mass fertility control education schemes. Education on birth control devices such as the pill, injections, IUDs, spermicidal foams, jellies and creams, condoms and vasectomies should be promoted more vigorously.

Sterilisation has rapidly become popular in both industrialised nations and developing countries. Today sterilisation is the most common method of birth control, with more than 200 million users and virtually no complications.

Methods of abortion pose serious risks. The inherent risk of complications remains a great problem. Women with life-threatening complications arising from abortions cannot be assured of emergency transport to health centres for further treatment, emergency care and assistance. Neither can they be assured of prompt admission to our already overburdened hospitals and clinics.

The Bill challenges the legal rights of parents, guardians and husbands, it promotes promiscuity and irresponsibility amongst our teenagers, it destabilises trust between married couples, and I foresee a great degeneration in family life as we know it today.

Uncertainty about dates is a big problem. It is said that the two most dreaded complications for an abortionist are a dead mother and a live baby.

If passed, the Bill has the potential of producing a full generation of women with severe gynecological and social problems. In America, of women who have had abortions, it is reported that 61% have increased their use of alcohol, 65% are suicidal, 69% are sexually inhibited, 73% have flashbacks of the abortion, 77% experience an inability to communicate, and 81% experience frequent crying.

Mr Chairperson and members of the House, it is a great privilege for me to participate in this historic debate today. I stand here to ask all hon members, even those who said that they were not going to vote for this Bill, to support the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Bill.

I put it to hon members as a fact that thousands of backstreet abortions take place on a daily basis. Does this not demonstrate to us that no anti-abortion legislation has ever stopped women from having abortions? The Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Bill will stop backstreet abortions and enable women who choose to end their pregnancies, to do so safely. This Bill does not prescribe to people. It does not tell any woman to have an abortion. It does, however, create the space for women to choose.

Abortion is not new to our communities and culture. Historical evidence shows that we performed abortions for many years. Xhosa, Afrikaner and coloured women used herbs to abort. Were our ancestors less conservative than we are? Today, we have one of the most enlightened constitutions in the world, which recognises women as equals in society. We need to honour our promise as set out in the Constitution, and give each South African woman the right to make her own choices about herself and her body.

For many women an unwanted pregnancy means a bleak future marked by hardship and suffering. I am sure hon members all know of a teenager who fell pregnant and could not go back to school, because schools still reject pregnant scholars.

Ke batla hore ke re, mantsibuyeng a kajeno: Bomme ba betwang, bana ba banana ba hlekefetswang ke bontante ba bona ka ho ba tsekisa dikobo, ke batla hore ho bomme ba hladilweng ke banna ba bona empa ba sa ntse ba hatellwa ke bona banna ba bona ba sa bone hore ntho eo ba e etsang ke peto, ho basadi ba hladilweng ke banna ba bona, bao e leng basadi ba ikemetseng ka bobona, mosadi o ne a ena le bana ba bahlano, a ima empa a itshireletsa ka tekanyo ya malapa. (Translation of Sotho paragraph follows.)

The scenario I have just mentioned to hon members is not unfamiliar to most. During the committee’s hearings, we heard evidence from a 14-year-old girl in Std 6 who was raped by her father and his friends. Her story was sad and shocking. In tears, she told us of her parents’ refusal to believe her. She had an abortion with the help of a social worker and her guidance teacher. Testimonies like these open one’s eyes to the reality at grassroots level.

Mr Chairman, this Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Bill is probably the most contentious Bill that has ever served before this Parliament. In countries where this kind of legislation was passed many years ago the controversy still continues unabated, and gives rise to many moral and ethical questions.

The debate normally centres around two basic issues—the moral and ethical arguments as opposed to the practical and political issues, in other words the prolife versus the prochoice. Perhaps, because this is such a highly emotional subject, one should start with a few facts. The fact is that roughly one out of five normal pregnancies end in spontaneous miscarriage without any interference whatsoever. Unfortunately, in medical terms we refer to these as abortions. This gives rise to the misconception that these were all backstreet abortions. Virtually all these spontaneous miscarriages in the first 18 weeks are incomplete and necessitate a surgical procedure to clear the womb. In medical terms this is referred to as a dilatation and curettage for an incomplete abortion and has to be recorded in the prescribed manner.

The surgical procedure of a D and C is not without risk, and a professor in obstetrics and gynaecology once remarked that if a doctor has not perforated a uterus during this procedure, he has not done enough of them.

The point is that without any backstreet abortion or legal termination of pregnancies, the spontaneous miscarriage of one out of five pregnancies is already a major cause of hospital admissions, surgical interventions, complications and even death. To use these figures as though they all reflect backstreet abortions is nothing short of disinformation and is confusing and misleading the public. It seems to me that if a lie is repeated often enough, it becomes the truth. The simple fact is that there are no scientific statistics or figures on backstreet abortions. If these figures were true, then surely our courts would have been clogged with 40 000 criminal cases of abortion per year.

Therefore, the primary question is whether a mother has the choice of the life of an individual, which is not part of her own body. This naturally leads to the concept of the viability of a fetus or of an unborn child. The fact is that this is only a medico-legal term which depends on scientific development. At first the figure was 32 weeks, it then became 28 weeks and it is now set at 24 weeks. It is clear that this definition of viability depends on medical science’s ability to keep the fetus alive, and not on any moral or ethical arguments. I also predict that these figures will become smaller in the future. It is my opinion that this legislation tries to rationalise murder on the basis of a scientific ability and a medico-legal definition and not on the basis of any lasting moral or ethical grounds.

As far as the categories of 0 to 12 weeks and 13 to 20 weeks are concerned, this is to my mind a waste of time and paper, as the qualification for a termination of pregnancy in the 13-to-20-week category is so ill defined and wide that basically it still amounts to abortion on demand. There is, for instance, no obligation on the woman to prove that she was raped or that incest occurred. The person chosen to do the termination must simply accept her word.

Furthermore, I still have to see a pregnancy which does not significantly affect the social or economic circumstances of a woman. Also, the wording ‘‘would pose a risk ...to the woman’s physical or mental health’’ is ill defined. Almost every normal pregnancy has inherent risks of complications or a one-out-of-five chance of a natural miscarriage.

The NP proposed an amendment to clause 2 which would allow registered midwives to carry out terminations only under supervision of a medical practitioner. The ANC rejected this amendment and one wonders whether this is in the best interests of the patients or whether this is just to compensate for the inability of the Department of Health to supply the necessary logistical and financial support.Clause 3 states that surgical termination may only take place at a facility designated by the Minister. By implication, therefore, a medical termination may take place anywhere. If this medical termination took place at a distance from a surgical unit, the patient would be placed at an unnecessary risk if any complications should arise. To me this is unacceptable and not in the best interests of the patient.

It is generally accepted all over the world that a woman undergoing any form of abortion is under severe emotional stress and that professional counselling, both before and after the abortion, is absolutely essential. Despite this, the Bill only asks from the State to promote the provision of nonmandatory and nondirective counselling. Again, one wonders if this is to accommodate the inability of the Department of Health to supply such a service.

Clause 5, which deals with consent, totally disregards the husband of a married woman. Furthermore, a minor, even a 12-year-old who understands very little if anything of the consequences of her actions, can give consent for her own abortion. This I predict is going to lead to serious misunderstanding and even litigation in the medical profession, especially when complications and resultant surgery becomes necessary which may leave a young girl sterile for the rest of her life.

I would like to advise them and all others who do not believe that there is a need for this Bill to read paragraph 2.12.6.4 on page 46 of the RDP document which all parties, including the NP, enthusiastically accepted in 1994 as a guideline for transformation. Due to the limited time at my disposal, I will not be able to quote this paragraph. However, in my opinion, by initiating this legislation the Department of Health is implementing the RDP. In fact many women and men across the country are satisfied that at last it has come. This is not to say that there is 100% agreement on the issue of abortion. There can never be. The reality is that there exists an unacceptable situation in our country which I strongly feel the department has the responsibility to address.

I would like to address two issues concerning the Bill, namely access for rural women and counselling. A number of oral and written submissions to the portfolio committee confirmed that the Abortion and Sterilisation Act of 1975 discriminates against women on the basis of class and race. Statistics from the Department of Health show that it is mainly white women who are able to procure safe legal abortions, with most of these done in the Western Cape and Gauteng. Meanwhile a Medical Research Council survey showed that women presenting at public hospitals with incomplete abortions were 99% black and were from all over the country.

The committee heard that even if a woman qualified under the restrictive terms of the present Act, the process was not only time-consuming and expensive, but was also very dehumanising. Women who fell pregnant after being raped found the process of procuring a legal abortion to be as traumatic as the rape itself.

Another submission pointed out that the numbers of qualified medical personnel required to grant legal terminations did not exist in many areas, especially in rural areas. Therefore, the 1975 legislation discriminates against women, black and rural women at that, as it denies them access to safe, legal abortions. These facts were brought to light in submissions by social workers, psychiatrists, various support organisations for women, individuals, men and women.

The committee felt that a Bill to be passed by a democratic Parliament like ours should transform rather than repeat the mistakes of the past made by the NP. We felt the time had come to shift resources from the minority to the majority.

Thus the amended Bill before the House this afternoon recognises the reality on the ground. It balances the need for access to safe, legal terminations for all South African women, wherever they live. It also recognises that women have a right to good medical care and support with regard to the termination of pregnancy. The procedures proposed are time-saving. A termination of pregnancy is made available upon request up to the 12th week of the gestational age. A registered midwife who has completed the prescribed training can perform the termination.

I support this formulation, as it recognises that there are midwives in this country who are highly trained and highly skilled. Secondly, this formulation recognises that medical doctors are not always available in rural areas. Thirdly, it recognises that in the first 12 weeks of gestation procedures are relatively safe—safer than other procedures qualified midwives are allowed to carry out, such as Caesarean sections.

I now want to address the issue of counselling as contained in clause 4 of the Bill. It reads, and I quote:

The State shall promote the provision of non-mandatory and non-directive counselling, before and after the termination of a pregnancy.

The committee recognises the importance of counselling, and so do a number of NGOs and individuals, both prochoice and antichoice. These include organisations such as the Reproductive Rights Alliance, Arag, the Black Sash, the ANC Women’s League and the ANC women’s caucus, to mention but a few. Even the prolife submission raises the question of nondirective counselling. It asks, and I quote:

The other question about counselling is what will it be about? Will the woman be told of alternatives to abortion? Although positions of different NGOs differ, they all concur on the need for counselling before and after termination of pregnancy.

Order! Hon member, your time has expired.

The ACDP’s intervention is ...

Mr Chairperson, who does the State punish for criminal behaviour? Is the real punishment reserved for the perpetrator of violence against society, or is it reserved for the innocent victim? The public believe that the State is on the side of the criminal. Can we really blame them for harbouring this suspicion?

The moral fabric of our society is being ripped apart strand by strand, limb by limb. We are duty-bound to take affirmative or corrective action on this matter. This country—I say this to the former member for Simon’s Town—has a host of laws which promote immorality. In an attempt to reverse this ungodly trend, it somehow finds its way to the scrapheap of abortion.

The Scriptures tell us that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and that we were known before we were in our mothers’ wombs. However, to obey God’s will in a society fraught with immorality requires a very strong and courageous person who is totally committed to honouring God’s law. We are, unfortunately, not governed by a theocratic government. We have a man-made democracy; hence all our problems.

Let us examine section 12(2)(a) of the Constitution that everybody is talking about. It gives people the right to make decisions concerning reproduction. We agree that a person may say yes or no to sex, but let us remember that with every right there is a corresponding responsibility. We are responsible for our actions. Personal choice is about making choices about one’s own body. It is not about aborting the life of another in a premeditated manner.

The position of the State is an invidious one. The decision that we must make is a traumatic one. All life is important. The mother’s right to good health is important. The developing child’s life is important. We all realise this.

We are conscious of the State’s need to stop many deaths caused by backstreet abortions. We share the concern about the rising incidence of teenage pregnancy, but we also have a responsibility to protect the developing child. The safest place for a baby is said to be the mother’s womb, but today that is becoming a very dangerous place to be.

We have to find better solutions. Others before me have mentioned some. Certainly abortion on demand is not one of them. The State must not be seen to kill either mother or child. It must be seen to be addressing the realities on the ground, and most of the solutions are social in nature.

Normal pregnancy is not an illness. The morality of making the taxpayer pay for this immoral economic luxury is tantamount to punishing the taxpayer for unnecessary murder committed by a third party.

When pornography and prostitution were decriminalised there was no suggestion of building pornography and prostitution houses. Why then does the State want to establish abortion ‘‘chopshops’’?

Mr Chairperson, hon members, abortion is a profoundly complex question. It involves the intimacy of a woman’s body, and individual and social rights. It touches on the issues of power and control of the reproductive process.

There is no consensus within the Christian faith as to what rights the fetus should be afforded. In fact, there seems to be very little consensus about the rights of the fetus in most religions. A recent report by the Muslim Judicial Council argues that there are morally justifiable grounds on which abortion can be allowed. Similar arguments are advanced by important sectors of the Jewish faith. Even in the Catholic Church, there are those who argue that Church law affirms both the right and the responsibility of Catholics to follow their conscience on moral matters, even when it conflicts with the Church. I mention these different strands of thinking in order to emphasise that no one in this House can simply argue that their religion demands that they vote against the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Bill. None of us can hide behind an unbending dogma.

Linked to the diversity of religious opinion is the question about the moral status of the embryo. While the fetus is a developing human being, it is also true that the early fetus does not have the rights of a baby. Acquiring moral status is a gradual matter. Medical opinion holds that the fetus cannot experience pain until more than midway through pregnancy. Only once the fetus is capable of registering pain does it become plausible to regard it as having rights comparable to those of a person.

Because the acquisition of moral status is gradual, the personal and socioeconomic contexts in which women take decisions to terminate pregnancies are critical. Few moral decisions are absolute, and most are made in a context of conflicting demands and relative considerations. Whatever decision is taken in the case of an unwanted pregnancy, the parties are left with a situation which is far from perfect. Understanding this should prevent strident, ecclesiastical condemnation of women who decide to have abortions. Grief, rather than guilt, is the appropriate emotion to accompany any decision to have an abortion. Being prochoice does not necessarily equate to being pro-abortionist. Nor does it equate to being antilife. Being prochoice means being able to recognise that women are faced with painful decisions in respect of which there are no absolutely correct answers.

I come from a tradition of liberation theology which has the suffering experienced by people as its primary point of departure. In this instance, theology must be practised from the starting point of the suffering of women with unwanted pregnancies. The cumulative agony of the 45 000 women suffering from incomplete abortions each year who resort to hospitals, must be prioritised. Their suffering must become the theological imperative which must drive us to identify the system which causes such suffering, and to eradicate it. It is the antithesis of liberation theology to prescribe to women in this context that there is no option whatsoever but to carry the pregnancy to term.

Mr Chairperson, the main criticism of the Abortion and Sterilisation Act of 1975 was the issue of access. The statistics show that the majority of women who manage to procure legal abortions are white, but the majority of women who present themselves at hospitals with septic abortions are black. Is it right, in the new nonracial South Africa, that women who have access to safe abortions in hospitals are still overwhelmingly white, while those who only have access to ‘‘aunties’’ and backstreet abortions, or who attempt to perform an abortion on themselves, are overwhelmingly black? As a Government which is committed to transformation and to the equal treatment of all people in South Africa, we have to take steps to remedy this situation.

At the National Women on Farms Conference in Grahamstown this year, women farmworkers resolved to campaign for the liberalisation of our abortion laws, and in 1994 the Women’s Health Conference, after consulting 4 000 women countrywide, also called for the liberalisation of our abortion laws. These campaigns are not about encouraging abortion. They are about facing up to the reality that abortion already exists on a large scale, and ensuring that everyone, black and white, who needs an abortion has the right to a safe abortion. Women farmworkers, women in the rural areas and women in informal urban settlements are in dire need of adequate reproductive health services. The only service that the previous government really gave these women was family planning and birth control. A woman knew that every three months a mobile clinic would come to the banana tree and that she could get her injection there, without even knowing what the injection was for.

We are not interested in racially motivated population control. We want to give all women good, safe, productive health care. The old services did not give that access. Most women, especially disadvantaged women, did not know that abortion was legal, but, even if they had known, how many women farmworkers and how many women in informal settlements would have had access to two psychiatrists?

Abortion is not the ultimate answer to unwanted pregnancy. It is only a part of the package of reproductive services. The key to preventing an unwanted pregnancy is to avoid getting pregnant in the first place, and that is an important focus of the department’s reproductive health service. Women need to be counselled as to the different forms of contraception so that they can choose which one suits them best. Such counselling should empower women to negotiate for safe sex.

Mr Chairperson, hon members, ladies and gentlemen, for me the debate today is about recognising and removing the restrictions, prohibitions and limitations on the general freedoms of women.

This Government not only ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women last year, but also bound itself to the Beijing Platform of Action.

I would like to remind the hon Grobbelaar that the debate is not about abortion or not. We know that abortions, whether legal or illegal, occur daily in this country. So that is not the issue today.

The hon Ms Cupido refers to the taxpayers’ money which will be used for abortions. The amount of R18,5 million is used annually. If that amount is used annually, there is no way in which anyone can stand up and say, as a taxpayer, that his money should be used in a certain way when the money of conscientious objectors, who were taxpayers in this country, was used to further wars against citizens of this country. Abortions are performed in this country and most of them are carried out on persons referred to by this Bill as minors, female persons under the age of 19. We are also told that up to 40% of abortions are performed on girls under the age of 19. Therefore this Bill cannot be silent on the issue of minors.

I do not know how many of us communicate with our children. I do not know how many of us sitting here know exactly when our children started menstruating. I do not know how many of us here can honestly stand up and say that we know for a fact that our daughter is having an affair or is involved in a sexual relationship. We do not know. However, I am sympathetic to the concerns that are raised concerning the issue of minors.

In other words, the provision in the Bill that says a minor can be regarded as a woman is correct in terms of the Setswana culture.

This Government cannot legislate on good relationships. This Government cannot be expected to legislate on moral issues. The argument and debate concerning whether people who commit heinous acts must be hanged or whether there should be abortion should not even be entered into. The two are completely different. They do not have any point of contact.

Religion is about compassion, sympathy, love and the alleviation of suffering. Religion is not about standing in this Parliament and directing acrimonious fingers and insults at women who need sympathy, compassion and help. I want to quote a feminist writer, Simone Dibangobai, who said:

It is only at the time of a woman’s first abortion that she knows her worth within her society. When that society forces her to go into the dirt and dark of a backstreet to abort, in fear and shivering, then she knows what her worth is in that society.

Are we saying that we want to go back into caves? How are those who are used to hair dryers and television sets going to survive? Are they saying that they want to reverse the wheel? One cannot.

Progressive societies recognise that individuals have interests which are best left to the individual’s discretion, for regulating against this by introducing a system of heavy authority would be like making a law that says that only strong men may become blacksmiths. Society has enough trust in strong men and would not make such a law. Let that same society not make a law that will force a woman not to have the dignity to make her choice, because the Bill is about choice. Let the woman stand alone and let us not interfere. God did not bring anybody into this world to interfere. Let the choice about whether a woman wants an abortion be between that woman and her Maker.

Order! It is unparliamentary to say that a member of Parliament lied.

It is not possible for anybody who has never gone to Soweto or Phola Park to stand here and tell us what we believe in and what we do not believe in, especially a person who sat right here in these benches and looked at black women being reduced to animals, to little things that make tea for the madam in the morning. This Bill is a first step—maybe that is why the hon member is so scared—that will take women in this country towards emancipation, the very first concrete step, and I support this Bill, as my party does.

Mr Chairperson, I firstly want to congratulate my colleague Pregs Govender on a well-researched speech.

The PAC has consistently supported reproductive health and the right of women to control their bodies. The Bill will extend the right of abortion to the poorest section of our population and give them much-needed protection. An abortion Act existed in the time of the old apartheid regime, but it was full of restrictions and favoured the white and wealthy in our society.

The new Bill is based on choice, and accordingly is called the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Bill. Abortion is not compulsory. The Bill extends legality and accessibility to all sectors of our society. It will remove it from the ill-handled operations in half-lit and murky backrooms, surrounded by secrecy and fear, and