By Thaddeus M. Baklinski
KINGSTON, Jamaica, July 14, 2008 (LifeSIteNews.com) – The campaign to legalize abortion on demand in the Caribbean nation of Jamaica is heating up.
Earlier this month the Joint Select Committee of the Jamaican Parliament held the first of three hearings to discuss the liberalization of the abortion law. On Thursday, July 10th, the second hearing took place. At this second session, the pro-abortion Ministry of Health presented its views.
Pro-life groups and concerned individuals have been invited to make written submissions to Parliament today, in anticipation of the third hearing this week and continued debate when Parliament resumes in September, following its summer recess which begins later this month.
Jamaican pro-life groups have repeatedly emphasized that the overwhelming majority of the Jamaican people do not want abortion. These groups claim that the effort to expand abortion in Jamaica is not in response to any broad-based demand of the populace but is the work of an elite group of individuals in league with radical international organizations who wish to impose it on an unsuspecting population.
Roman Catholic Archbishop Donald J. Reece, spokesman for the Jamaica Council of Churches, said not only was the project to liberalise abortion in Jamaica contrary to the law of God, but it also militates against the deeply held values of this nation.
“The people of Jamaica have not asked for abortion; the churches have not asked for it nor has the vast majority of civic groups or their leaders. A reasonable person might rightly question who exactly it is that wishes to impose abortion on this nation,” the Archbishop said in a Jamaica Gleaner report.
Archbishop Reece urged the Government to implement obstetric care for mothers in rural areas, provide abstinence education for young people and implement programs for family strengthening.
Zandra Levy, of Youth for Life, said, “Abortion is not the essential demand of Jamaican women, but is instead a ruthless response to a harsh socio-economic problem that does not cater to the specific needs of women in our society.”
“We the members of the Youth for Life Jamaica are standing firm in the conviction that the youth of Jamaica do not need abortion,” she said.
The Jamaica Observer reported that government minister Senator Dwight Nelson declared his stance to colleague members of the Joint Select Committee saying, “I am pro-life. I believe abortion is murder. I will vote against any bill or law that seeks to make abortion legal,” and pointedly questioned whether the solution for abortion and its complications really lay in making “an illegal act legal.”
Senator Nelson added that more must be done to provide women with good health care and pregnancy resources rather than pushing abortion.
Christina Milford, founding director of the Pregnancy Resource Centre of Jamaica in Montego Bay, spoke at the Defend Life Jamaica press conference earlier this year and strongly encourage the government to look at all the ramifications of legalizing abortion.
She herself had considered abortion after becoming pregnant almost 30 years ago, after a rape at age 18. She said she was thankful to the doctor who discouraged her from going through with the procedure.
“I didn’t know about abortion. I thought it would solve my problem; that much I knew. So I packed my bags. I put in my six nighties. I didn’t know a thing. I didn’t know what it would entail. I figured it was just hospitalisation. They (brother and friends) said if I went and told them exactly what happened, I would get a free abortion so I said okay.”
But with the pregnancy having reached three months at the time, the doctor discouraged her from going through the procedure.
Speaking of her experience then she said, “I got to the place, pushed by my circumstances, where I thought this is what I had to do. Thankfully it is not today. Because today’s doctor would have aborted my child. But that day that doctor said, ‘This is too far gone, don’t try to do it’.”
Today, the son whose life she almost ended is an engineer with his bachelor’s and master’s degrees and a family of his own.
“I know that a child in a rape situation is like an atonement for that terrible act. I don’t know how the Lord had planned to turn it around, but somehow he turned around something that was bad to make something that is wonderful,” she concluded.
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage of the abortion issue in Jamaica:
Jamaican Nurses Oppose Government Plan to Decriminalize Abortion
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/may/08050608.html
Jamaican Religious and Civic Leaders Respond to Proposal to Decriminalize Abortion
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/feb/08021109.html