By Ibekimi Oriamaja
Civil societies for women and disabled youths have petitioned Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu to lift the 15-day suspension of the Lagos State Guidelines on Safe Pregnancy Termination for Legal Indications.
They claimed that suspending the policy would harm women and their pregnancies, emphasizing that it had “reverted the state to the sufferings our women endured prior to independence.”
The women’s groups spoke at a press conference held yesterday at the De Rembrandt Hotel on Obafemi Awolowo Way in Alawusa, Ikeja, by the Women Advocates Research and Documentation Centre (WARDC).
WARDC Executive Director Dr Abiola Akiyode-Afolabi accused religious and cultural organizations, as well as individuals with philosophical convictions, of weeping and kicking against the working documents developed over four years of painstaking work in her address to delegates.
“We suspect the state government is being blackmailed using religious sentiments.” Women have both the right to bodily integrity and the right to live.
For legal reasons, the state guidelines on safe pregnancy termination should be lifted immediately. “She pleaded with us to save women from an avoidable death.”
According to Dr. Akiyode-Afolabi, several international organizations have issued guidelines indicating that women have the right to choose whether or not to have an abortion, including the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Federation of Gynaecologists and Obstetricians, Amnesty International, the United Nations, and the Royal College of Gynaecologists and Obstetricians.
