A family planning expert, Mr. Emmanuel Ewor has advocated for the setting up of Post Abortion Centers in the various states of the federation, saying it makes no sense throwing those who have committed abortion to the streets to die to their fate.
He said rather than leaving them to their fate, they should be seen as lucky ones for surviving the abortion process.
Ewor who is the Rivers State Project Officer of the Planned Parenthood Federation of Nigeria (PPFN), made this position known in an interview with Nigeria Newspoint in Port Harcourt, Monday.
He explained that: “The PPFN is all about family planning. We counsel against abortion. We preach that it is better you plan your child birth in such a way that you can carter for the children you have given birth to. But our position is that people who have committed abortion should not be left to their fate to die of complications arising from abortion.”
“Nigerian Law prohibits abortion. It is an illegal act. My concern is, if after prohibiting abortion and somebody has gone ahead to commit the act, what happens to the person. Should the state release the person to the street to her fate because abortion is illegal?” he questioned.
Continuing, Ewor asked, “Is it not possible that Post Abortion Services should be rendered to those who disobeyed government’s law or should anybody who disobeys government’s law be sentenced to death? So, that is where post abortion services come in”, he said.
He suggested that such disobedient citizens should not be sentenced to death but that the person should be made to access information through post abortion services centers.
“Even if when you have done it; and you are wrong in doing it, the state should be able to say “well, you have done the wrong thing but I want you to be alive so that you will correct yourself and not do it again next time. So, there should be some kind of counseling for those who have gone through abortion so that they would have been exposed to the options available to them, like family planning or abstinence from sex”, he opined.
He urged fellow Nigerians not to see people who underwent abortion as ‘unclean’ but lucky ones because they were not killed in the process. Condemning them forever, he said, would amount to throwing away the baby with the birth-water. “You rather need to remove the child and throw away the birth water”, Ewor added.
He reasoned that despite government’s warning that smoking is dangerous to health, people still smoke even the more dangerous ones, yet there are rehabilitation centers where smokers go and be rehabilitated. So he said, it ought to be for those who have committed abortion.
