A clinical officer, who has been allegedly using poison or a noxious thing to procure abortion, faces 14 years in jail, if convicted.

The 44-year-old Monday Erasmus on August 8 appeared before Nateete-Rubaga grade one magistrate Amon Mugezi, who read out the charges to him.

Erasmus was charged with the offence of attempts to procure abortion contrary to section 141 of the Penal Code Act.

Consequently, he was remanded to prison until September 5 after denying the offence.

This was after the prosecution told court that investigations in the matter are still going on.

While Erasmus was eager to secure bail pending trial, Mugezi advised him to make the application before the trial chief magistrate, saying he was only standing in for her.

Section 141 of the Penal Code Act provides that any person who, with intent to procure the miscarriage of a woman whether she is or is not with child, unlawfully administers to her or causes her to take to take any poison or other noxious thing or uses any force of any kind or uses any other means commits a felony.

On conviction, such a person is liable to imprisonment for 14 years.

Prosecution alleges that on January 28 at Domain Clinic in Nakulabye zone, Kampala, with intent to procure abortion, Erasmus caused the girl (name withheld) to take poison or a noxious thing by way of administering it.

The injunction on abortion

Article 22 of the Constitution provides that no person has a right to terminate the life of an unborn child except as may be authorised by law.

Abortion is thus criminalised in Uganda unless it is done by a licensed and registered physician to save a woman’s life or preserve her physical or mental health.

The health ministry’s 2006 national policy guidelines and service standards for sexual and reproductive health and rights lays out a number of specific cases in which women have the right to seek an abortion including, rape, sexual violence, incest or when the woman has pre-existing conditions, such as HIV or cervical cancer.

With women lacking access to safe and legal abortions, many of them turn to unsafe abortion practices, such as self-induced abortions.

The ministry’s annual health sector performance report of 2017-2018 estimated that 5.3% of all maternal deaths resulted from abortion complications as of 2018.

Several research that has been done on why women go for abortion indicate that most cite unintended pregnancy.

Thus, family planning programmes are one way to lower the prevalence of illegal or unsafe abortions.

Globally, 25% of pregnancies end up in induced abortion, the majority of which are unsafe. Abortion is safe when conducted according to World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendations.

They include removing medically unnecessary policy barriers to safe abortion, use of telemedicine, where appropriate and simple primary care level interventions, among others, are given.