Twice the number of teachers are aborted annually

By TONY MASIKONDE

We are living in very interesting times. Every other week, dark figures are bandied around. Figures that Frao and I suspect are manufactured in the boardrooms of civil society NGOs, though research companies are usually roped in, too.

A new report from Ministry of Health has left us petrified. The report makes no attempt to sugar coat reality as it revealed that about 465,000 women had abortions last year! Despite more liberal abortion laws, the vast majority of these abortions are done in unsafe conditions.

Dimly

According to this report, Kenya’s national abortion rate, at 48 abortions for every 1,000 women, is higher than almost every other country in Africa. Now, as a country, we suffer no qualms being at the podium finish of corruption and related ills, but having the highest level of abortions, illegally procured at dimly lit dens isn’t the sort of thing they give you medals for.

So as we gulped our scotch, we pondered over the ‘Kenyans’ who did not see the light of day.

“Just how big is this number?” Frao asked. For the first time in a long time, I could see genuine concern in this discussion. His heart obviously hurt.

“To put it into perspective, 465,000 abortions mean that these acts snuffed lives of enough children whose number is twice the rough estimate of teachers in this country,” noted Mark.

Dusk

It is also double the figure that separated the final tally between retired President Kibaki and his old pal Raila Odinga in the infamous 2007 poll, according to Mike a staunch supporter of the ‘Orange Nation’.

“Had we gotten those numbers in the polls, we wouldn’t have had a presidential swearing in at dusk,” he quipped rather sardonically.

Talking political numbers, this is the total amount of votes garnered by Musalia Mudavadi in this year’s election, or if you like, the entire registered number of voters in Kakamega County.

Shackles

“While am not condoning abortion since it’s not an air-borne disease, I can say with a certain degree of certainty, that a good number of women who procure abortions are not killers, but young women who cannot manage to raise their children due to shackles of poverty,” argued Stacy.

“But as we have been previously warned, choices have consequences and these women before they lie down and lift up their legs ought to be aware of the consequences of their choices,” I argued.

“Sometimes the women are victims of circumstances. They also live in a world where all the major decisions are made by a man,” Stacy held her ground, clearly taking a feminist bias that was quickly nipped in the bud by Frao.

“Please don’t make the mistake of assuming that all these abortions were procured by poor illiterate girls. Two weeks ago, bodies of newly born children were discovered in a City Council bin near my house and for your information, Nairobi’s Kilimani area is not one of the poorest,” argued Frao.

Perhaps as Kenyans, we are hell-bent on killing each other, be it via road carnage, election contestations or abortions or plain murder.