ANAMBRA ABORTION LAW: TIME TO BRING OUT THIS LAW AND QUASH IT – By Sonnie Ekwowusi

Unknown to many including many citizens from Anambra State, abortion is legalized in Anambra State. You and your pregnant wife are from Anambra State. If one day your pregnant wife got up from the wrong side of the bed and told you that she had unilaterally made up her mind to procure an abortion to kill your fifth child in the womb on the unfancied argument and pseudo-rationalization that her body belonged to her and that she could do anything she liked with her body. Will you beat her up? No. That is unlawful. Will you call the elders for her? That might not work for you. And if you continue to insist that she should refrain from procuring abortion to kill your fifth child in the womb, she could refer you to the extant Anambra State abortion law or report you to the Human Rights Commission or even take you to court for trying to prevent her from exercising her “right to choose”. This is one fall-out of the Anambra abortion law. Of course, there are other unwholesome fallouts.

You mean abortion is legalized in Anambra State, a State which has produced Blessed Cyprian Iwene Tansi, Cardinal Francis Arinze, formidable intelligentsia, top politicians, academics, business moguls and so forth? Yes. The Anambra State abortion law is called, “Women’s Reproductive Right”. A copy of the aforesaid law is still in my kitting. The law came into force on 17th March, 2005 during the Chris Ngige administration. Professor Brian Adinma, then commissioner for Health, Anambra State, who is in fact a Knight of the Catholic Church, masterminded the legalization of abortion in Anambra.

The same Prof., Adinma succeeded in converting six public Health Institutions in Anambra State at that time into Abortion Centers with Manual Vacuum Aspirators (MVA) used in procuring abortion. Is this not a big scandal? I think so. But why do Nigerian abortionists and United Nations Agencies like International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), United Nations Population Funds (UNFPA), Ipas, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Ford Foundation, Macarthur Foundation, UNIFEM, and DFID employ euphemisms and dodgy words in marketing abortion in Africa and Nigeria ? Because the word abortion is repugnant in our socio-cultural and religious milieu. Besides, previous attempts to legalize abortion and contraceptives in Nigeria had been met with stiff opposition. When the idea of legalizing abortion was first mooted during the Alhaji Shagari administration, a group of women and mothers from either Imo State threatened to storm Abuja naked. After that threat, the idea was dropped. Under Babaginda’s military autocracy, they also tried to legalize abortion, but that moves were thwarted at the last minutes. In 1991 the campaign by some medical doctors in Lagos to legalize abortion led to the conduct of Opinion Poll on the matter. When the result of the poll came out, nearly half of every 10 Lagosians (that is, 47%) were opposed to it.

1.ABORTION IS ILLEGAL IN NIGERIA

By virtue of the combined effects of sections 228, 229,230 and 328 of the Criminal Code and the some sections of the Penal Code, abortion is illegal in Nigeria. In fact, section 328 of the Criminal Code specifically states that: “Any person who when a woman is about to be delivered of a child prevents the child from born alive by any act or omission of such a nature that, if the child had been born alive and had then died, he would have be deemed to have unlawfully killed the child, is guilty of a felony and liable to imprisonment for life”. The 1999 Constitution is the grundnorm of Nigeria. Section 33 of the constitution guarantees the right to life. It states that no person shall be deprived of his/her life except in execution of a sentence of a court in respect of a criminal offence of which he/she has been found guilty in Nigeria. Section 17 of the Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy of our Constitution stipulates that the Nigerian social order is, among other things, founded on the sacredness of human life. Equally section 38 of the constitution guarantees the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion: it stipulates that every person in Nigeria is entitled to propagate his/her religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance. Therefore, before the National Assembly can pass a bill on such a sensitive and volatile subject matter as abortion, a constitutional amendment to the aforesaid provisions of the 1999 constitution will be required. Even prior to the amendment, there will be need for a referendum on the matter to afford the stakeholders and the public the opportunity to speak their minds.

So, abortion is illegal in Nigeria. This is no speculation. It is the law. Can the law be enforced? Yes. The police can if the citizens lodge complaints and petitions. Our law firm has gotten the Nigerian police to shut down and charge to court some abortion clinics in Nigeria. The latest our law firm did was to petition the Police to shut down the Marie Stopes notorious abortion clinic located in Lagos. I accompanied the police in that operation. The abortion doctor called Dr. Bernard was handcupped whilst the police ransacked the abortion clinic in search of abortion exhibits.

2. WHAT IS REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH OR RIGHTS?

Considering that abortion is illegal in Nigeria coupled with the vehement opposition to the legalization of abortion in Nigeria, abortionists and radical feminists promoting abortion Nigeria have resorted to be using euphemisms and coded phrases like “Reproductive Rights or Health”, “Family Planning”, women’s health, women’s right, “Maternal Mortality”, “Safe Motherhood” etc in promoting abortion in Nigeria so that nobody will suspect what they are doing. With the terms “women right”, they means the right of women to procure abortion; “family planning” or “family planning services” is another euphemism of theirs. It means given women access to abortion clinics to procure abortion; “Safe Motherhood” means abortion and contraceptives on demand.

The concept of reproductive health and rights is one of the most abusive concepts used by the United Nations Population Funds (UNFPA), Planned Parenthood Associations, Pro-choicers, some NGOs etc. The phrase might sound palatable to the ears of the unwary, human rights activists and women NGOs who least suspect the sinister motives behind the concept. First, the word “reproductive” in the context in which it is commonly used by its proponents is an inappropriate word because human beings do not reproduce: human beings procreate. Procreation is impregnated with much more exalted meanings than the biological process of reproduction.

The World Health Organization (WHO) unfortunately promotes abortion especially in African countries. This is not a conspiracy theory. Not hearsay either. I have touched it. I have seen it. I have witnessed it. The WHO has produced an official definition of the concept Reproductive Health during its preparation for the United Nations international Conference on Population and Development in Cairo is 1994. It defined it as:

“ Reproductive health implies that people are able to have responsible, satisfying and safe sex (underline mine) and they have the capability to reproduce and the freedom to decide if, when and how often to do so. Implicit in this last condition are the right of men and women to be informed of and to have access to safe and effective, affordable and acceptable methods of fertility regulation (underline mine) of their choice, and the right of access to appropriate health care services (underline mine) that will enable a woman to go safely through pregnancy and child birth and provide couples with the best chance of having a healthy infant”.

The same WHO defined fertility regulation as: “the process by which individuals and couples regulate their fertility. Methods that can be used for this purpose include amongst others: delaying childbearing, using contraception, seeking treatment for infertility, interrupting unwanted pregnancies (underline mine) and breast-feeding.

The above definition, as luminous as it may seem, is simply a great euphemism for promoting illicit sex and abortion or what professor Steven Pinker has dubbed neonaticide (killing of a child on the day of its birth) or filicide (killing of a child at some later stage).

So, let us decode the hidden time-bombs in the above definition under the following sub-headings:

(a) “Safe Sex” or “condom sex” means indulging in immoral casual sex and relishing in its pleasure while avoiding its consequences.

(b) “Fertility regulation” and “interrupting unwanted pregnancies” mean abortion on demand.

(c) “Access to appropriate health care services” means access to the abortion clinics

3. “ADOLESCENT SEXUAL REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH”, CORRUPTION OF INTEGRATED SCIENCE SYLLABUS AND TEACHING OF IMMORALITY IN SCHOOLS

“Adolescent Sexual Reproductive Health” is another coded phrase or euphemism for promotion of abortion, illicit sex, and contraceptives among students in Anambra State schools, Lagos State schools and other States. Can you imagine teaching a ten-year-old boy/girl in JSS1 the techniques of masturbation, dating, putting on the condoms, sexual communications and negotiations, how to do abortion in secret, how to practice “safe-sex” in secret without getting pregnant by using contraceptive like IUCD, injectables, vaginal foams and jellies, diaphragm, hormonal implants, oral contraceptive pills, touching and examination of male and female reproductive organs, naked body images, erection, ejaculation, kissing, caressing, sterilization procedure for male by making incision in scrotum and by cutting and tieing the Vas deferens, sterilization procedure for female by cutting and tieing the Fallopian tube, infertility under the guise of sex Education?

About 17 years ago, some concerned mothers in Lagos to the Lagos State government to the Federal High Court, over the teaching of the above immoralities in secondary schools in Lagos State under the corrupted Integrated Science Schemes of Work in junior secondary school and Sexuality Education Scheme of Work for students in senior secondary school. Sylvia Shinaba, SAN (may her soul rest in peace) led us in that matter at the Federal High Court, Lagos. Happily, the Lagos State government opted for amicable settlement on the ground that the it would withdraw the corrupted Integrated Science Curriculum

Suffuce it to say that prior to the corruption of this new Integrated Science Scheme, the old Scheme of Work for 1999/2000-2001/2002 Sessions for junior secondary school in Lagos State did not contain any of the aforementioned immoralities. What is happening in Nigerian schools? Find out what they are teaching your children in school. Inspect the text books, Literature in English books, Science and Social Science and notebooks used by your son/daughter at school.

4. DANJUMA’S ABORTION BILL

You will recall that Senator Daisy Ehanire-Danjuma (Edo-South) sponsored an Abortion Bill at the National Assembly in 2006 under the euphemism: National Institute of Reproductive Health bill. The Public Hearing of the Bill came up at the Senate the 13th February 2006. The Bill was met with stiff opposition, the strongest coming from many mothers and women who stormed the Senate early in the morning of the fateful day in two buses. I was one of the lawyers that argued the case of about 15 Nigerian NGOs and organizations at the National Assembly in opposition to the Bill. In their defence, the abortionists argued that the Bill was not an abortion bill since the word: abortion was not specifically mentioned in the Bill. In response, we argued that even though the word: abortion, was not explicitly mentioned in the bill, the concepts of reproductive health and adolescent sexual reproductive health mentioned in the bill are all well-known euphemisms or soft languages for promoting abortion, contraceptives among school children, teaching children the techniques of dating, masturbation, “safe sex” with condom etc in Nigeria and all over the world.

Faced with stiff opposition, Senator Danjuma elected to withdraw the bill for possible amendment. But we opposed the amendment. Between Thursday April 27 to Sunday April 30, 2006 the Senate Health Committee organized a 3-day retreat at Presidential Hotel in Port Harcourt for a select group of 18 persons to reconsider the Bill. I was not in that group. Anyway after another consideration, the Abortion bill was finally dismissed for lack of merit and for being dismissed for being incompatible with public morality and public interest.

5. ATTEMPT TO LEGALIZE ABORTION THROUGH THE DOMESTICATION OF THE CONVENTION ON THE ELIMINATION OF ALL FORMS OF DISCRIMINATION AGAINST WOMEN (CEDAW)

After the defeat of Danjuma’s Abortion Bill, the WHO, Packard Foundation, UNFPA, USAID,DFID, UNIFEM together with some Nigerian money-miss-road abortion-medical doctors and NGOs, have re-grouped and been putting pressure on the National Assembly to domesticate the controversial United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

Prima facie, CEDAW appears laudable; in fact some of the CEDAW articles contain praiseworthy elements aimed at tackling egregious discrimination against women. But as you know very well, abortionists are experts at using euphemisms and soft languages to camouflage abortion. Deception is part of their stock-in-trade. If you read the General recommendation 24 (General comments) by CEDAW sponsors dated 5th February, 1999 (which you can easily download from the Internet, by just going to goggle and typing in, CEDAW and abortion), you will understand why CEDAW is another subtle way of bypassing the national laws of a country and legalizing abortion through the back door. Therefore, let nobody be deceived by semantics and flowering rhetoric. CEDAW is seadog that must be caged. It is as another abortion bill.

Nigeria must not domesticate CEDAW for the following reasons.

First, article 12 of CEDAW states: “States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in the field of health care in order to ensure, on the basis of equality of men and women, access to health care services, including those related to family planning”. Family planning may sound nice in the ear of the unwary, but to abortionists, family planning essentially means giving women unimpeded access to legal abortion. In 1998 the UN Division for the Advancement of Women, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the WHO, and the United Nations Population Fund met in Tunisia and said that the criminalization of abortion contributes to poor health status of women; that in most countries women are primarily valued as mothers and the interruption of pregnancy is socially censured; that gender discrimination is a determining factor in legal, political and religious barriers to women’s access to safe abortion. Their solution: legalization of abortion via articles 10(h), 12 and 14(b) of CEDAW. Also, in order to change the traditional male attitude towards women, they agreed at that meeting that all children should be sexualized starting from early age. Boys should be sexualized to treat girls as sexual equals at an early age. Quality sexual information and services including emergency contraceptives should be given to boys and girls at an early age to enable them enjoy sexual pleasure without inhibitions.

Second: the United Nations groups trying to make abortion an internationally recognized human right, have consistently interpreted article 12 to include right to abortion. In fact since 1990, pro-abortion agendum has dominated the focus of CEDAW.

Third: CEDAW stipulates that any country that ratifies it must show compliance by giving progress report on its implementation to a CEDAW Committee. Over the years, this Committee has become notorious for urging countries that domesticate CEDAW to decriminalize prostitution and abortion. It is on record that the Committee has pressurized 37 countries to liberalize their abortion laws. In 1999 the CEDAW Committee, which regulates the operation of CEDAW in countries that ratify and domesticate it, told Columbia that the provision of its law outlawing abortion was a violation of the rights of women to health enshrined in article 12 of CEDAW. On July 1, 1999 the CEDAW lambasted Nepal for criminalizing abortion. On July 9, 1999, CEDAW Committee told Chile that the Chilean laws punishing abortion were violating the rights of Chilean women. In 2000, CEDAW told Burkina Faso to review its laws on abortion and provide for coverage by social security. In 2000 also, CEDAW Committee told Andorra to revise its punitive abortion laws in agreement with Recommendation 24. In February 2000, CEDAW Committee urged Sweden and Germany to increase the social protection of prostitutes in the two countries. On January 17 2001, CEDAW Committee decried the criminalization of abortion in Burundi. On January 23, 2002, CEDAW Committee urged Portugal to revise its restrictive abortion laws. On January 28, 2002, the CEDAW Committee urged Uruguay to subscribe to abortion rights.

In 2004, CEDAW Committee complained that despite the legislative framework in Brazil, the right of abortion and homosexuality were still not in force that country. On January 14, 2005 CEDAW Committee raised concern over the criminalization of abortion in Paraguay. On April 14, 2005, Monica Roa, radical feminine liberator and director of Women’s Link Worldwide (WLW), successfully challenged the Colombian total ban on abortion, predicating her augment on article 12 of CEDAW. It was the same WLW that challenged the ban on abortion in Spain, Poland, Australia, Thailand and South Africa. On January 24, 2005, CEDAW Committee pressurized Samoa to legalize abortion. CEDAW Committee has also prevailed on Ireland, Mexico, Croatia, Peru, and Zimbabwe, Italy to liberalize abortion laws in their respective countries.

Fourth: the United States has refused to ratify CEDAW because of “the vagueness of the text of CEDAW, and “the record of CEDAW Committee that reviews and comments on implementation (of the provisions of the Convention into national law)”, and because of the “controversial interpretations of CEDAW Committee’s recommendations to States Parties”. In addition the United States has refused to ratify CEDAW because of article 16 (1)(e) that requires that women be allowed “to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children”. This article paves the way for abortion to be legal through all nine months of pregnancy. The UN’s website reveals the intent that “the Convention also affirms women’s right to reproductive choice”, which include the prohibition of fetus protection in the workplace, prohibition of laws sanctioning mothers for doing abortion, a mandate that abortion be funded with public funds etc. If the United States, which legalized abortion in 1973 in ROE V WADE, has refused to ratify CEDAW, why should Nigeria, where abortion is still illegal, proceed to now ratify or domesticate CEDAW?

Fifth: CEDAW insinuates that women are the owners of their bodies and have the rights and autonomy to do whatever they like with their bodies. Married women enjoy the right to procure abortion with or without the consent of their husbands. Lawful access to abortion is fundamental to the liberation of women from male dominance and oppression. This language is unacceptable because it contravenes the African values enshrined in the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (1990), Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. By removing the law from the protection of children, CEDAW has infringed on one of the original human rights principles-to provide legal protection for the child. This principle was recognized at Nuremberg, recognized, from beginning of the United Nations, as a fundamental obligation in the international Bill of Rights.

Sixth: In his paper presented on March 15-19, 1998 entitled: Rights to Sexual and Reproductive Health-the ICPD and the CEDAW, D. Carmel Shalev, advocate of CEDAW, said inter alia” the criminalization of abortion is particularly heinous, because it not only impairs women’s right to reproductive choice-to make free and responsible decisions concerning matters that are key to the control of their lives-but also exposes them to the serious health risks of unsafe abortion, violating their rights to bodily integrity and, in the most extreme cases, to life itself…” Implicit in this proposition is that a woman has a reproductive right to kill her baby anytime and anything trying to stop her is violating her right to safe abortion. You may now appreciate the warped reasoning of these abortionists. There is no right way of doing something that is evil. Murder is murder, no matter how it is carried out.

Seventh: to the Committee enforcing CEDAW, “family planning” in article 12 CEDAW “ means that women have a right to choose whether or not to reproduce, including the right to decide whether to carry or terminate an unwanted pregnancy and the right to choose their preferred method of family planning and contraception”. This definitely gives right to abortion.

Eight: Article 2 of CEDAW seeks to abolish the national laws, customary rights, and tradition of the countries that domesticate it. Nigeria is a multicultural society governed by different customary laws. But if Nigeria domesticates CEDAW, all those customary laws applicable in different States in Nigeria will cease to apply. That will be calamitous!

Nine: CEDAW is aimed fostering Western liberalization, emancipation of women in Africa. But Africa is different from Europe and America. In many European and American countries, the family institution has collapsed. Homosexuality and bestiality reign supreme. No children. No grandchildren. Should Nigeria copy these immoral foreign values? Certainly No.

From the foregoing, we can deduce that CEDAW is an international treaty aimed at, among other things, giving women “ a satisfying safe sex life” which includes access to “safe and legal abortion services”. But the truth remains that abortion is always a defeat of our humanity. The elaborate mixed semantics and dressing-up on abortion by powerful international lobby groups and money-miss-road NGOs, will never hide the fact that abortion is a willful homicide. In the history of humanity, never has abortion been accepted as an objective good. In all cultures and religions, the killing of a human being, whether fetus, small or big human being, is an objective evil. In many traditional African societies, murder is an abomination against the land.

As abortionists continue to pressurize the National Assembly to domesticate CEDAW, we are obliged to make it known to our countrymen and women that CEDAW is a deadly snake which must be killed before it crawls into the house. No legislation can make it good. I strongly believe that the Nigerian people have no wish to embrace CEDAW and by extension legalize abortion. For this reason, it is essential that the National Assembly rejects the pressures from abortionists to domesticate CEDAW. President Yar’Adua should leave a legacy behind by refraining from assenting to the CEDAW bill. Africa is for Africans. We must reject the use of African soil as a dumping ground for all sorts of evil by our neo-imperialists. If we allow ourselves to be deceived by the West by domesticating CEDAW and legalizing abortion, the lives of our children and children’s children will be at great risk and strangers will inherit our land.

6. ANAMBRA ABORTION LAW: THE WAY FORWARD.

The Anambra State “Women’s Reproductive Right” law is a twelve paragraph piece of legislation. Deceptively enough, the word: “abortion” is not specifically mentioned in the law. This is understandable. Because the word abortion is repugnant in Nigeria socio-cultural and religious setting: because previous attempts to legalize abortion in Nigeria had been met with stiff opposition, (UNFPA), UNIFEM, DFID and other pro-abortion United Nations Agencies in Africa have been asked to employ euphemisms and dodgy words in marketing abortion in Africa and Nigeria. I attended the Reproductive Right Conference (Abortion Conference) in Abuja in 2003 where the idea of the legalization of abortion in Anambra was mooted. (In fact that was the Conference I first met Professor Adinma). At that Conference the organizers of the Conference told journalists in attendance (I attended the Conference as a journalist) to use dodgy and deceptive language in reporting abortion so that the unwary public would not understand what is happening.

The offensive section of the Anambra abortion law is section 6(a) (b) which states:

“The view of the woman shall be taken into consideration for decisions:

a. On the number, timing and spacing of the children and:

b. On their shared responsibility in sexual relationship and reproduction free from forms of violence, provided that the best interest of the woman shall be paramount in situations where her health is in issue…”.

To the uninformed, section 6 (a) of the law might appear laudable, but trained lawyers who familiar with history and import of Reproductive Right will explain to you that the phrase is a euphemism for abortion rights. The thing is that section 6 (a) has consistently been interpreted in all countries and places as giving women right to abortion and contraceptives. Section 6(a) was first articulated as an abortion right by the international community at the International Conference on Human Rights in Teheran. Since then it has consistently been reaffirmed as an abortion right in a number of Sub-International Conferences. At the International Conference on People and Development (ICPD), 1994, it was reaffirmed as an abortion right to women. At the Beijing Platform for Action, 1995, it was again reaffirmed as giving women right of abortion.

Section 6 (a) gives any pregnant woman in Anambra State the right to procure abortion through all the nine months of pregnancy. The language of the section is substantially similar to Article 16(e) of the controversial Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) which also states that: women are allowed: “to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children”. Therefore both section 6(a) of the Anambra law and Article 16 (e) of CEDAW guarantees any woman access to abortion through all the nine months of pregnancy. It is worthy of note that the United States has refused to ratify CEDAW because of Article 16(e) of CEDAW which promotes abortion. So if the United States has rejected CEDAW because of the aforesaid offensive Article 16, why is Anambra State importing the said Article and embracing it as its abortion law?

To really understand the meaning of section 6(a) of the Anambra abortion law, one must read the publications of the Center for reproductive Law and policy, 120 Wall Street, New York, United States where the Anambra law was borrowed. The phrase: “on the number, timing and spacing of the children”, according to the publications, requires government to make abortion services legal, safe, and accessible to all women. According to the publications: “Abortion is a woman’s choice”, ‘Women are entitled to have access to all safe, effective means of controlling their family size, including abortion”, “A woman has a right to make decisions regarding her own body”, Denying women access to abortion is a form of gender discrimination, “Safe abortions services protect women’s right to health”

So, section 6 (a) of the Anambra abortion law gives the Anambra woman autonomy to decide the number of children to have with or without the consent of her husband. It gives an Anambra woman the right to determine the number children she should with or without the consent of her husband. This may sound nice to the unwary but it is a big disaster for a married women to procure abortion in her matrimonial home with or without the consent of her husband. By virtue of section 6(a), the married Anambra woman is free to tell her husband that she doesn’t want to have babies at all for the rest of their marital life. She has a sole right to decide whether or not to have children, including the right to decide whether to carry or abort a pregnancy which she does not want. We should be careful in swallowing these western lifestyles hook line and sinker. In Africa, a child does not only belong to the married woman: the child also belongs to her husband and in fact to the whole family and even the extended family. I think it is simply absurd for a pregnant married woman to proceed to abort her baby without the consent of her husband who in fact is responsible for the pregnancy.

Let me briefly narrate to you one event of my life that I still find unbelievable. In 2003 I attended a Reproductive Health Conference in Abuja. One of the Conference Speakers was one Professor Rebecca Cook, Faculty of Law, Toronto University, Canada. When this lady got the nod to present her paper, she unbelievably started canvassing the idea that a married woman can choose to make herself impotent or take her husband to court for making her pregnant. After her presentation, I got up and told that her that Africa is different from Europe or America where all sorts of aberrations are allowed in the name of “equality between men and women” or in the name of “women sexual right”. Her face turned red. She whispered to the moderator that I was intimidated her. In response, I told her that I was not intimidating her rather I was reminding that she was in Africa where infertility in marriage is often regarded as a curse not a blessing.

Another dangerous section of the Anambra law is section 7(1) which guarantees Anambra women free medical services including free pre-natal and post-natal care. Again, in principle, this is praiseworthy ex-facie , but in practice the section gives Anambra State women the right to solicit for free pre-natal and post-natal services in many government hospitals. And in the course of this solicitation, the women would be talked into procuring abortion and use of contraceptives by government doctors and nurses on duty. In most cases pregnant women who have had five children are scolded by the government nurses not to have more babies again. They brainwash the pregnant women by telling them that having more children is hazardous to their health.

THE WAY FORWARD

The way forward is to bring out the Anambra State Reproductive Right or Anambra abortion Law and quash it. We must put a stop to the teaching of our children in secondary schools the techniques of doing abortion in secret, the practice of “safe-sex” in secret without getting pregnant by using contraceptive like IUCD, injectables, vaginal foams and jellies, diaphragm, hormonal implants, oral contraceptive pills; touching and examination of male and female reproductive organs, naked body images; techniques of erection, ejaculation, kissing, caressing, sterilization procedure for male by making incision in scrotum and by cutting and tieing the Vas deferens, sterilization procedure for female by cutting and tieing the Fallopian tube etc. Children are our future. If we destroy the future of our children, we are finished as a people.

Unfortunately the abortionists have infiltrated some Christian institutions in Nigeria. According to the Happy Home Foundation, an NGO based in Enugu, abortionists have succeeded in penetrating the Holy Rosary College, Enugu. Some Catholic Health Institutions in Enugu are now being used as platforms for the promotion of abortion. In May 2006, IPAS, a notorious abortion Agency, organized a Seminar at Mother of Christ Hospital, Enugu. During the Seminar, a Manual Vacuum Aspirator (MVA) used for abortion was displayed for grab. In the past, Happy Home Foundation lamented that an award was given by the CMO to well-known woman abortionist in Enugu. This is another scandal. So we must get the Church hexarchy to deal with these Anambra Catholics being used by the abortionists in promoting abortion in Anambra.

We MUST speak up. We must begin to act in earnest. We must get the Anambra State House of Assembly to repeal the Anambra State abortion law. We must equally get the government to stop IPAS from distributing MVAs in our hospitals. Chigbo Nnagbo Esq., and I had tried in the past but failed. Why did we fail? Because the then members of the Anambra State House of Assembly were demanding from us the sum of N1.5 million extortion from us in order to get the Bill quashed. We did not have that kind of money. I am a poor lawyer with no money. My learned friend, Chigbo, I am certain, cannot bring out that kind of money from his lean pocket.

7. CONCLUSION:

Nigeria must stop swallowing immoral western ideas hook line and sinker without first ascertaining their suitability and relevance to our own unique circumstances and culture. I appeal to you to stand up and be counted. Don’t remain on the fringe anymore. A world unfit for children is tottering on the precipice of collapse. Natural law from whence springs our values is written in every one’s heart. We cannot erase it from our hearts. Although our world is under the tyranny of vice our strength lies in our primordial values. These values remain the superstructure for building our national ethos. If we should allow this ethos to be destroyed a big vacuum will be left behind. And as you know very well, nature abhors vacuum. To fill up this vacuum, we must return to pristine values.

I challenge you to stand up and be counted. The future of Nigeria lies in our hands. I invite you to lay a foundation for the building of a new culture of love where human life is respected. We must learn to love because love surpasses instincts. “The greatest destroyer of love is abortion”. (Mother Teresa). If we make the wrong choice by allowing our children to be aborted; if we hearken to the voice of the West and kill our unborn children, our country will become an evil country and strangers will inherit our lands and posterity will never forgive us. A word is enough for the wise.