By Parrots UG Reporter,
MBARARA:
Journalists from Mbarara have been encouraged to positively report on safe abortion of girls and women in Uganda.
This was during a training for journalists organized by the Association of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Uganda in partnership with Advocacy for Prevention of Maternity Mortality and Morbidity Project that took at Lake View resort hotel in Mbarara City on Friday October 22, 2021.
A number of scribes learnt on the methods of how to report on the burden of safe and unsafe abortion especially in Uganda.
According to research done by AOGU, at least every year a number of 297,000 people aged between 15 and 45 carry out abortion which is risky to their lives.
Professor Dan Kaye, the Executive Director of AOGU told scribes that the practice of carrying out abortion is illegal and according to research done almost half of the practice is believed to be done by the medically professional people.
The vice of getting rid of unwanted pregnancies leads to complications of ladies in the near future.
Leah Kahunde, a journalist who was also a participant encouraged journalists to always set the agenda of the story to be covered and practice positive reporting on making abortion safer.
Kahunde also told journalists not to always risk their stories by publishing incomplete stories and explain the socio-cultural context and the power dynamic as they also identify the legal issues that will help to explain legal issues pertaining this cause.
Leah Kahunde speaking to Journalists
Advocate Samuel Baker Alimon Wanadi explained to journalists the law system that guides and rules that are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior and the laws that elaborate rights and responsibilities of a person who wants to commit a felony.
According to Panel Code act section 141 Wanadi further quoted “Any person who, with intent to procure the miscarriage of a woman whether she is or is not with child, unlawfully administers to her or causes her to take any poison commits a felony and is liable to imprisonment for fourteen years”
He further noted that in Uganda the law does not entirely prohibit abortion but rather restricts it so he asked the public not to practice abortion because it’s not safer for girls and women.
