YAOUNDÉ. Cameroon – Catholic activists across Africa have joined Church leaders in Nigeria in condemning government’s attempts to “expand access to safe termination of pregnancies” in the West African country.
The Nigerian Health Ministers, Dr. Mukhtar Yawale Muhammad and Dr. Osagie Ehanire, have been pushing for the revision of the Penal Code to expand access to abortion rights, and they found a working partnership with abortion-promoting NGOs like the International Planned Parenthood Federation, IPPF and Ipas.
The government has argued that the intention is to safeguard the lives of girls and women, where over 20 percent to 30 percent of maternal deaths result from unsafe abortion. Dr. Lucky Palmer, the Country Director of Ipas Nigeria Health Foundation, said that unplanned pregnancies contribute to over 1,500 maternal deaths annually in Nigeria.
Catholic activists under their umbrella organization, CitizenGO Africa, have pushed back against relaxing abortion laws, citing the freedom of even unborn babes to life.
“This move [to legalize abortion] threatens the lives of millions of unborn children and undermines the laws and the moral foundation of our nation,” the activists say in their December 2 protest.
“The lives of innocent unborn children are at risk, and the normalization of abortion would mark the beginning of a tragic devaluation of human life in Nigeria.”
They singled out not only the foreign NGOs pushing for abortion rights, but also Yawale Muhammad and Ehanire, accusing them of having “betrayed their duty to protect life.”
The activists urged the Nigerian President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu to dismiss the two ministers, asserting that the government officials had “aligned themselves with an agenda that seeks to strip Nigeria of its pro-life identity, prioritizing foreign interests over the lives of Nigerian children.”
They warned that delaying to sack the Ministers “brings us closer to a future where the sanctity of life is devalued, and abortion becomes normalized.”
Catholic leaders in Nigeria have added their voices to the protests, telling Crux that abortion fundamentally violates God’s gift to life.
Josef Ishu, secretary of the Nigerian bishops’ conference Laity Office said that the Catholic Church’s stance on abortion is that nobody has the right to take or terminate another person’s life.
“This is one of the fundamental principles of the Catholic Social Teaching, respect to human life from conception to natural death, from womb to tomb. This is so because life is sacred, and we all are created in the image and likeness of God, therefore, only God can take life when He so wish,” he told Crux.
He discarded the argument by abortion activists who say a woman has the right to do whatever she wants with her body.
“They are wrong,” he said and said he wondered why the pro-abortion advocates never question why they weren’t aborted by their mothers.
“The truth of the matter is even if you want to control birth, the Catholic Church recommends billings method, total abstinence in the case of unmarried men and women. So it is absolutely unnecessary for such arguments that a woman has a right to determine what happens to her body,” Ishu told Crux.
Father Zacharia Nyantiso Samjumi, Secretary General of the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria (CSN) added that the government ministers were violating the country’s Constitution by advocating for the legalization of abortion.
“This development seriously threatens the value and dignity of the human person,” the priest told Crux.
“It is saddening to know that it is the Government that is so oblivious of the Constitution of the country it solemnly swore to protect because the decisions by the Government contravene the provisions of the Constitutions, which prescribe absolute protection and respect of human life and its inherent dignity. For example, section 33 of the 1999 Constitution, as amended, guarantees the right to life, stating that “every person has a right to life, and no one shall be deprived intentionally of his life, save in execution of the sentence of a court in respect of a criminal offence of which he has been found guilty in Nigeria,” Samjumi added.
He said Chapter IV of the same Constitution outlines fundamental human rights, including the right to life, dignity, and freedom from discrimination, emphasizing the importance of protecting human life and dignity.
“How could a government do that to its people? The Constitution says one thing, and the government, which has a duty to uphold the Constitution, deliberately contravenes it,” Samjumi said.
He proposed that rather than “enthrone the culture of death through the legalization of abortion, the government should place a premium on the sacred dignity and love that should be accorded to the human person, which is guaranteed by natural law and divine commandments and affirmed in the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”
“It is safer to have human dignity included in the curriculum than to work against it in the name of providing access, shrouded in the garb of human freedom. The more we know and value the dignity of the other person, the more society would seamlessly live in peace and harmony,” the priest told Crux.
