HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — A law prohibiting abortion services for women raped by their husbands and girls under the age of 18 is unconstitutional, Zimbabwe’s High Court has ruled.
In his ruling handed down on Nov. 22 and made public this week, Judge Maxwell Takuva said since Zimbabwe’s laws already criminalize marital rape and sex with a minor, victims should be allowed to abort if they become pregnant.
The ruling is significant, given Zimbabwe’s restrictive abortion laws that often lead women and girls into illegal and unsafe backstreet abortions that in many cases turn fatal.
Abortion is allowed in very few circumstances in Zimbabwe, including such as if the pregnancy endangers the life of a woman, or if there is a risk of a physical or mental defect “of such a nature that (the child) will permanently be seriously handicapped.” Women can also access legal abortion services in cases of unlawful sex such as incest.
Zimbabwe criminalized sex with any person below 18 in September following an earlier constitutional court ruling ordering parliament to raise the legal age of consent for sex to 18 from 16. But the highly restrictive Termination of Pregnancy Act still denied abortion services for girls under 18.
“There is no doubt that it is torture, cruel and degrading treatment for a child to carry another child, for a child to give birth to another child or for a child to be forced to illegally abort because of cruel circumstances,” said the judge.
The government did not mount any opposition to the case, which was brought by a women’s rights group, although the ruling must still be approved by the Constitutional Court to become effective.
The judge said providing access to safe and legal abortion services for underage girls “is significant in light of the massive instances of teenage pregnancies in Zimbabwe, and consequently illegal teen abortions and teenage mortalities.”
The country of 15 million people records about 77,000 unsafe abortions annually, but many others go unreported. Many girls and women die from abortion complications each year, according to the United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF.
Teen pregnancies are rife in the southern African country because of lax enforcement of laws, cultural and religious practices and widespread poverty that also make it difficult for girls and women to access contraceptives and clinics.
Almost one of every four girls falls pregnant between the ages of 10 and 19, according to figures by the government and UNICEF. One of every three girls is wed before age 18 in the deeply conservative southern African country where girls are usually culturally forced to marry men responsible for their unplanned pregnancies.
