Mother procured six abortions and two for daughter

By DAVID ODONGO

Mama Kevevia has had six abortions in the last five years and has procured two abortions for her daughter, now aged 17. Mama Kevevia, who has a shop in the sprawling Mathare slums, sees nothing wrong with abortion.

Her only worry is about us using her real name and taking her photos. Once we promise to keep her information confidential, she talks freely.

“I don’t think I regret it. I already have four children. Three are teenagers. I don’t want any more children, we simply can’t afford it,” says Mama Kevevia.

She lives in a single-room on the ground floor of a five-storey building in Mathare North, Area Three. Half of the room is set aside for the shop, portioned with a papyrus reed mat. She stays with her husband, a driver, and four children on the other portion.

“Mzee alishasema hataki watoto wengine. Namimi sitaki kumkasirisha. Inabidi tuu nifanye hivyo (My husband said he doesn’t want any more children and I don’t want to annoy him by going against his wish),” she says.

Her daughter, who wasn’t present during the interview, dropped out of school in Form Two, and has been doing casual jobs.

“She helps me at the shop. I bought some kerosene that she retails outside the shop. But she can only do that in the evening. She spends the whole day with her friends and only comes back home in the evening.”

What would drive a woman to procure an abortion, not once, but six times and also twice for her daughter? And why can’t she use other methods of family planning to avoid getting pregnant in the first place?

“We have meagre resources,” she explains, “my husband’s job doesn’t pay much and if he found out that our firstborn was pregnant, he would throw her out. I am only praying that she gets a nice man who can marry her and take care of her. For me I can’t use those pills or injectables. I hear they are dangerous,” says Mama Kevevia.

She says she has always gone for abortions at a private clinic, a few metres from her shop.

Under the Constitution, abortion is illegal except when a mother’s life is in danger. But women like Mama Kivevia don’t worry much about this law – it only takes a few minutes to get a medical practitioner who will perform an abortion for just a little pay, she confides.

Treatment room

To demonstrate this, she leads The Standard team to a huge ugly building in her neighbourhood. It’s a four-storey building that houses a driving school and a cyber café.

On the ground floor is a gas cylinder retailer, tucked in the corner, almost hidden from view, is a small pharmacy.

“That is the place. It’s a pharmacy, but it’s got a room in the back where they ‘treat’ us. It used to be the only one in this area, but there is competition nowadays,” she says, as she points to another pharmacy, a few metres from the first one.

The World Health Organisation, says unsafe abortions, especially those done illegally, are one of the leading causes of maternal deaths in Africa, killing at least 25,000 women annually and injuring a staggering 1.7 million every year.

Many are maimed or killed by horrific “home remedies” that include catheters, roots or herbs placed in their vaginas to induce bleeding.

Cheap service

It costs Mama Kevevia Sh2,000 to procure an abortion, a thousand shillings more than the amount she pays in rent for her ground floor single room. Unlike Mama Kevevia, not many women admit to having had an abortion. In addition to the affordable cost, there is no big deal in seeking the service.

For example when John Wasike took his girlfriend for a pregnancy test at the Mathare pharmacy, he was readily offered termination. The clinic attendant pulled hime aside and explained, “She is pregnant, but we can also terminate the pregnancy today. I can do that right away since I am not busy.”

A shocked Wasike walked out of the clinic with his girlfriend. He is happy he didn’t listen to the attendant for today he is a proud father of daughter, three.

Polly Karwitha, a medical practitioner, says if abortion were legalised, probably no woman would go for backstreet abortion clinics that risk their lives.

Terminating pregnancy

“Terminating pregnancy is still a taboo in most communities and many women are scared of it. When they decide to go ahead with it, they want it to be done confidentially, ” says Karwitha.

According to respected medical journal, Lancet, legalising abortion would be a simple way to reduce the maternal death rate. In South Africa, the number of abortion-related deaths fell by 91 per cent after the procedure was legalised in 1997.

“Making abortion legal, safe and accessible does not appreciably increase demand,” says the Lancet study.

“Instead, the principal effect is shifting previously clandestine, unsafe procedures to legal and safe ones,” according to the study.