Kenya court overturns landmark abortion rights ruling

NAIROBI — A Kenyan appeals court on Friday overturned a landmark ruling that accessing abortion was a fundamental right.

Kenya is a deeply Christian country where abortions are legal but still taboo, pushing hundreds of thousands of women and girls towards backstreet clinics that put their lives in danger.

The Centre for Reproductive Rights, an international NGO, says seven Kenyan women die every day from unsafe abortions, and many face extortion by police due to uncertainty around the law.

Kenya's 2010 constitution allows for abortions if the "life or health of the mother is in danger", but the country's penal code, written during Britain's colonial rule, has yet to be amended to reflect that.

The court case dated back to September 2019, when a 16-year-old girl was arrested in her hospital bed by police in the coastal area of Kilifi, along with the clinician, Salim Mohammed.

She had come to the clinic with severe complications from an abortion, including pain and bleeding, and Mohammed determined she had lost the baby and provided post-abortion care, their lawyers say.

Mohammed was charged with providing abortion services and held in custody for a week. The girl was charged with procuring an abortion, and because she could not afford bail, she was held in a juvenile prison for more than a month.

The High Court ruling in March 2022 not only quashed the charges but affirmed that access to abortion was a constitutional right, and that patients must be protected from practices such as forced medical examinations used to prosecute them.

That was overturned by the appeals court on Friday, April 24. 2026, which said the law was clear that the right to life starts at conception, and so lower courts had the right to investigate whether the girl's health was in danger before she sought an abortion.

"Abortion is not a fundamental right guaranteed under the Constitution. On the contrary, the Constitution expressly prohibits it but provides exceptions in limited circumstances when it may be permissible," the judges ruled.

"Constitutional rights could not, of itself, stand in the way of proper investigation, charge and prosecution of the alleged offences in issue," they added.

The Centre for Reproductive Rights called it "a deeply disappointing decision" and said it would appeal to the Supreme Court.

"This decision raises significant concerns on access to reproductive health services in Kenya," it said in a statement.

"This case forms part of a broader pattern in which individuals seeking or providing reproductive healthcare face criminal sanction, despite constitutional guarantees of dignity, health, and freedom from cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment," it added.

Rights groups say the legal uncertainty around abortions has often led to police harassment and extortion of patients and doctors.

A study by the African Population and Health Research Centre, the ministry of health, and the Guttmacher Institute estimated there were more than 790,000 induced abortions in 2023 alone.

It said more than 300,000 received post-abortion care in a health facility, primarily due to complications from unsafe abortions.