The International Safe Abortion Day 2025 themed “Safe Abortion is Life-saving Healthcare!”had been celebrated at Ayiera community iniative at the the slums of Ngomongo Nairobi.
Women who spoke during the event reiterated their solidarity with all the women and adolescent girls in Kajiado to reaffirm that access to safe abortion an essential healthcare service and a fundamental human right that must be protected and upheld.
According to a recent report by the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC), in collaboration with Kenya’s Ministry of Health and the Guttmacher Institute, indicates that in 2023, Kenya recorded approximately 792,694 induced abortions. Many women initially resort to unsafe practices, such as ingesting harmful substances or using sharp objects, before turning to medical abortions using pills obtained from pharmacies or clinics. This sequence often leads to complications, with over 304,000 women seeking post-abortion care in 2023. Unsafe abortions leads to women and girls experiencing severe maternal outcomes, including death or coma, while also facing potentially life-threatening complications.
Safe and legal abortion remains inaccessible to a majority of our women and girls due to restrictive laws and policies, reporting requirements for healthcare providers and limitations on the cadre of healthcare providers who can provide services exist. In Kenya, despite Article 26 of the Constitution, there is blanket criminalization of those who seek and provide post abortion care. These legal, policy and administrative barriers have resulted in a state of uncertainty, leading to reluctance by healthcare providers to perform safe abortions, even in situations of health emergencies, where it is permitted, driving women and girls to seek unsafe abortions with devastating consequences to their health and well-being.
Regressive trends on the continent including attempts to roll back legal protections and prevention, the spread of mis and disinformation, and the stigmatization of services providers and those seeking safe or post abortion care. The resultant effect is the compounding of the intersecting barriers that women and girls face, denying them the full range of essential sexual and reproductive health services.
The women have urged county and national government and policy makers to act urgently and decisively in safeguarding and expanding access to safe abortion in the following ways, the government should actualize Article 26 of the Constitution and repeal the Penal Code Articles 158-160, 228 and 240 which criminalize access to abortion undertake the necessary legislative reforms and decriminalize to remove the blanket criminalization and legalize access to safe abortion in line with the Maputo Protocol.
The government has been challenged to fastrack the removal of policy and administrative barriers including those that arbitrarily limit the cadres of health providers and levels of health facilities that can provide abortion services especially for the most vulnerable women and girls. National and our County Governments take measures to eliminate abortion stigma through the provision of accurate information and education on safe abortion care as an essential health service, its legality and availability.
Judiciary should remain committed to safeguarding the human rights of women and girls as they develop national and regional jurisprudence that protects essential healthcare services.The judiciary training institute to incorporate information and education on SRHR including safe and legal abortion in their training curricula and programs.
