Why do so many women lack easy access to legal abortion care?
We are discussing the barriers associated with the journey that women and girls go through to be able to access services. For more about the legal framework and barriers please watch our videos and leave comments or questions may you need clarification.
Before 2009, the Rwandan penal code severely restricted abortion, allowing it only to protect a woman's physical or mental health. Abortion was widely assumed to be fully illegal. Rwanda passed a new penal code in June 2012. Article 162 of the Criminal Abortion Act expanded the exceptions for permissible abortion to include: 1. rape, 2. incest, 3. forced marriage, and 4. risk to the woman's or the fetus's health. A woman seeking abortion needed certification from a "competent Court" to obtain a legal abortion under exceptions 1-3. The law was revisited in April 2019. In addition to the existing exemptions, the new Rwanda ministerial order No002/MoH/2019 allows girls under the age of 18 to terminate a pregnancy before week 22 of pregnancy. Furthermore, the new law eliminated the requirement for a court order to obtain an abortion. Even so, women and girls still face challenges in line with accessing safe abortion services. We are discussing the barriers associated with the journey that women and girls go through to be able to access services. For more about the legal framework and barriers please watch our videos and leave comments or questions may you need clarification.
