Beauty told me a few stories on Friday that literally made my hair stand on ends. It’s been bugging me since then, so I just have to share my distress.
I mentioned last year, that Beauty has a little sister who had a baby. She stays with Beauty, and Beauty insisted that she went back to school to finish her studies after the baby was born. She did her matric last year (final school year).
However… Beauty discovered last week that her sister fell pregnant again. While she was writing her finals last year she was pregnant. And then she had an abortion apparently when she was about 2 months pregnant. She’d asked a friend of hers where to go, because that friend has had a few abortions and knew where to go… nice contraception method… but that’s not the point of this story.
And that friend was the person who eventually told Beauty. As you can imagine Beauty is livid, in fact, she’s told her sister to leave the house now and she has to now live with her new boyfriend (not the father of the first child – who is now living with the father’s granny in the Eastern Cape).
What she also told Beauty, was that something went wrong during the abortion, and that her sister collapsed, and the doctor apparently asked the friend to call the family… and her sister refused and told the doctor that the family wasn’t around. Nice! Luckily for her sister, it all ended ok because she seems to be fine now.
Anyhoo, Beauty went on to tell me that one of the abortions that this friend has had… was done when she was 7 months pregnant!! OMG! That blew my mind. She was told to take a pill… and then the baby was born dead. Nice! That’s not just highly illegal… that’s murder!!
The fact that there are people in Jo’burg that will readily take money from these girls and then kill their babies makes me so mad!! There are legal abortion clinics all over the place… but they’re obviously working above the law and will abide by the abortion timelines… but these back-street clinics just blow my mind. I actually didn’t know that they were still around. The whole purpose of legallising abortion was to stop this kind of thing from happening.
Then the story got worse. Beauty then told me about her one neighbour who was cheating on her husband and fell pregnant 2 years ago. She apparently knew that when the baby was born he was going to figure out that the baby wasn’t his. So at 8 months pregnant she went to an abortion clinic. They gave her a pill. From the sounds of what happened, it sounds like it was a pill to bring on labour.
The neighbour then went into labour one night, and locked herself into the bathroom. When the husband got into the bathroom he found his wife lying on the floor with the baby in a plastic bag in front of her. He then called Beauty to help, also because he didn’t want to be accused of anything. She insisted that the police get called… but they took so long to get there that they eventually called the ambulance because by then she had passed out. And guess what… NOTHING happened to her!! NOTHING!! She killed her baby for God sake, and NOTHING happened!
It blows my mind.
Comments
ExMi
carte blanche did a story on the back street abortions, using pills. it’s the pills given to full-term women to induce labour. only instead of one or two, they’re given a handful.
baby is born dead, or dies shortly after. it’s horrific and it makes me sick thinking about it.
supermom
It’s murder and why they get away with it, I don’t know. BUT this is Africa. Here you CAN get away with murder. Literally
It is SO not okay
Marylin
That sends shivers up my spine. How awful.
Janet B
That is horrific! It’s frightening to think that they do get away with murder! But what is wrong with these girls? They are so jolly irresponsible in the first place – once, but TWICE???
The Jackson Files
Oh my god. That is just terrible. I weep for the future of the world, I really do.
Laura
Good heavens!! That is all so horrific!!
I have heard of that pill! I can imagine nothing worse
acidicice
It is truly heartbreaking. The problem is, this happens ALL THE TIME. There are too many headlines about babies found in trash cans and in rivers.
I wish these people were better educated about family planning and birth control. I saw a documentary on Special Assignment I think on how commonly abortion is used as birth control. It’s a horrible thing to go through.
What can we do though?
Sarah
Jeez….words fail me.
pamiejane
I also watched that Carte Blanche episode and was horrified. They were saying that they thought some of the “abandoned” babies were actually babies that were born after the mothers had taken these pills and so they thought they should have been born dead. I mean, these babies are basically full term. It is absolutely horrific!
Tanya
oh jeez Jeanette..I didn’t realise that babies were aborted at such late stages!! Gawd it makes me so mad!! there are woman out there trying so hard to have a baby and these woman can do this??? It makes my blood boil!!!!
angel
it is indeed mindblowing, wow.
i think maybe the “backstreet” clinics thrive because the proper clinics are so expensive, and few and far between in tiwnship settings…?
Michelle Jamie
Abortion is something close to my heart. Have you ever been to Abort73.com?
Corey~livingandloving
oh it horrifies me…..and I dare not think about it too much.
Adila
Hi. I work for an NGO called Ibis Reproductive Health, based in Jhb with offices in The United States as well as the Middle East. Across our research we have come across alot of cases such as the ones you have described. Right now one of our projects is looking at abortion services in SA and why young women 1) use it as a contraceptive method and 2) what can be improved on so as to ensure that women go to a public health facility to get an abortion instead of using illegal methods from dodgy ‘doctors.’ We also work on contraceptive usage and family planning. It is great that you blogged about this because so few people know about what is available and where one can go to get an abortion. The law states 20 weeks as the cut off point for abortions yet these ‘doctors’ will do the abortions way into the third trimester. It sickens me to know that they get away with murder!
Adila
just one more point
abortions at public hospitals are free! All the women has to bring with her are sanitary towels, underware and something to read while she is waiting for her cervix to dialate. Also, there are two types of abortions – medical and Dialation and curretage. A medical abortion is where the women is given drugs and then aborts the fetus whereas dialation and curretage is the physical removal of the fetus from the womb.
Panni
It breaks my heart. What is so sad is that these women have one, two, however many abortions and then when they actually do want a child one day then there body is so “mutilated” that they can’t have kids.
Those poor little babies. So innocent yet just “thrown” away.
Pia
I am so shocked right now. That poor baby. My heart aches when I imagine how that all played out.
As for using abortion as a form of contraception – well that’s just sickening.
kompostela
This story frozzen my blood. I can’t think about anything else already 2 days:(
Steve
Some years ago at a church hospital in rural Zululand the sewerage system was blocked, and when the maintenance people investigated this they discovered the blockage was caused by a baby.
This became a subject of rumour and gossip, and was raised at a church meeting. The medical superintendent of the hospital (an Englishman) said that it wasn’t a baby, it was an unviable foetus, which they had burnt in the hospital incinerator. He was quite annoyed that it has been raised at the meeting, and thought it was a lot of fuss about nothing.
The priest in whose parish the hospital was, a Zulu, said, “but you don’t just throw a person away”.
And that is the nub of the matter.
The number of people who believe that “you don’t just throw a person away” is diminishing all the time. Robbers kill for a cell phone or less. People flush babies down the toilet. Nobody cares.
We talk a lot about ubuntu. But if you aren’t concerned about throwing a person away, whatever it is, it’s not ubuntu.
Ubuntu is the belief that you don’t just throw a person away, the belief that people are important and valuable.
But ubuntu is a thing of the past.