25 Years of Legal Abortion in SA

by Gunther Simmermacher · Published February 1, 2022 · Updated February 1, 2022

How The Southern Cross covered the build-up to and aftermath of the parliamentary vote to legalise abortion, published in October and November 1996. In the “Abortion won’t free women” lead story, Advocate Noel Pistorius, Fr Peter-John Pearson and Archbishop Lawrence Henry state the Catholic Church’s position to the parliamentary portfolio on health. Inset: CPLO’s Mike Pothier.

On February 1 it is 25 years since abortion become legal in South Africa. In that time, more than 2 million unborn lives have been ended by a procedure which the Catholic Church condemns as evil.

Günther Simmermacher spoke to political analyst Mike Pothier, programme manager of the Catholic Parliamentary Liaison Office, about why abortion has become so widely accepted in South Africa and many parts of the Western world.

Secular society, and some Christians, believe that abortion is a matter of women’s autonomy over their own bodies, and that view seems to become increasingly mainstream. Why is that?

One of the pro-abortion lobby’s greatest successes has been to establish the notion that abortion is simply a matter of “women’s bodies, women’s choice” and, in a wider sense, nothing more or less than a question of women’s rights.

The first of these arguments sounds plausible — after all, the absolute biological connection between the female body and pregnancy is obvious. But it should also be obvious that there is another biological reality involved: the foetus is certainly in its mother’s body, but it is not entirely of its mother’s body. It has its own DNA, for one thing.

Approached scientifically — or if you prefer, objectively — it’s clear therefore that abortion is about more than “women’s bodies”, and therefore about more than “women’s choice”. In an age which claims to place a great emphasis on science and fact-based thinking, it ought to be possible to pursue dialogue along these lines.

As for the “rights” argument, we are in an age which champions human rights and which actively seeks to identify the most vulnerable people in our society, and to offer them protection. For example, the recognition, in recent decades, of the reality of various sexual orientations and of the unconscionable way that people with such orientations have been treated, has resulted in their rights being validated and protected.

You mentioned dialogue. Both sides insist that they are acting for a greater good, and both sides often vilify the other. Is there any possibility for fruitful dialogue?

Perhaps one way of advancing dialogue on abortion is to approach it from an understanding of vulnerability. Yes, of course women’s rights are a central part of the question, and the vulnerability of women with difficult or unintended pregnancies must be acknowledged and taken seriously. But we must also ask for recognition of the vulnerability of the other person in the pregnancy — the unborn child.

Is there a way of reconciling the two sides of the debate?

I can’t think of a way in which both the proponents and opponents of abortion could walk away satisfied. In that sense, it’s a zero-sum game. From the anti-abortion standpoint, the “other side” needs to recognise and value the humanity and personhood of the unborn child at all its stages of development. From the pro-abortion standpoint, whatever consideration might be given to the rights of the foetus, if any, is less compelling than a consideration of the rights of the mother. Until one side or the other is prepared to re-evaluate its rights equation, there can’t really be a reconciliation.

Is there any chance that the South African government might reverse its policy on abortion?

At the moment, I would say, there is no chance at all. There is no electoral pressure on the governing party to change its policy, and with the exception of the African Christian Democratic Party and one or two of the very small opposition parties, there is no political push to restrict abortions.

It’s noticeable that this issue hardly ever arises in coverage of parties’ manifestos and policy platforms. To an extent, this is understandable, given the centrality of issues like poverty, unemployment, corruption, crime and so on. Unfortunately, compared with these, abortion is regarded as a private matter concerning only the woman and her doctor. Hardly anyone in politics sees it as having any wider social significance.

What are the current pressing concerns in South Africa regarding abortion?

Apart from the most obvious concern — that on average over 100000 unborn children lose their lives to abortion every year in our country — it is very worrying that abortion has increasingly come to be seen as merely another medical intervention, with little more significance than having any other form of surgery. This has been a conscious tactic by proponents of abortion, because if the procedure can be made to sound routine and uncontroversial, then there is less chance of people being swayed by ethical arguments against it.

In some countries, New Zealand most recently, the law has been amended to do away with the few remaining criminal sanctions that attach to non-medically approved abortions. We have not yet got to that stage, and an abortion performed outside the term limits and conditions set by the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act is still a crime — at least in theory. I don’t know when last anyone was prosecuted for it.

And young people are growing up thinking abortion is good and normal.

Yes. It seems likely that this “normalisation” of abortion will be most effective among younger people. The vast majority of them will have had it explained to them in life orientation classes at school as one of the options for dealing with an unwanted or accidental pregnancy, probably with very little discussion of the moral dimension.

Apart from our prayers, how can Catholics best counteract legal abortion and its effects?

I think there are various things that we can do, and are doing, that can make a difference. Supporting women with crisis pregnancies is vital. Although there are some Church facilities offering this, much more is needed.

It’s also vital, in my view, to avoid the “culture wars” approach that we see in the United States and a few other places. It promotes bitterness and rancour. Rather than changing attitudes, I suspect that it merely solidifies people’s positions and closes off whatever small openings there may be for respectful dialogue.

We also have to face the fact that many women who opt for abortion do so because of poverty and an inability to cope with another mouth to feed. Until we — Catholics as much as anyone else — bring about a fairer society, with an economy that gives real hope to people, this will not change.

But we also need some introspection. The ongoing clerical sex abuse scandals have seriously undermined the Church’s credibility when it comes to matters of sexuality and sexual ethics — and rightly or not, abortion is widely regarded as falling under that heading. So, for many people, the Church’s preaching on abortion has a whiff of hypocrisy about it.

There is the view that the Catholic Church is “anti-women”.

There is a problem of how the Church treats women. We still relegate women to second-class status when it comes to leadership, authority and decision-making. This kind of ecclesiastical oppression of women — from which many other faiths and denominations have gradually moved on — mirrors and augments the other forms of social oppression from which most women, and especially poor women, suffer.

If we accept — as I think we must — that the great majority of women who seek an abortion do so not for any flippant reason but out of a sense of desperation, even hopelessness, then we must surely ask what the factors are that have led them to that position. And structural oppression, with its economic, political, social and cultural aspects — in some of which the Church is unfortunately complicit — is surely one of those factors.