Kenya Plans to Hang a Nurse for Botching an Illegal Abortion
By Alex Park | Wed Oct. 1, 2014 6:30 AM EDT
Abortion is prohibited in Kenya except under certain circumstances, forcing hundreds of thousands of women underground every year to receive treatment. But it's not just these women who are putting their lives in danger: Late last week, the Kenyan high court gave a nurse the death penalty after a patient and her fetus died during an illegal abortion.
The nurse, Jackson Namunya Tali, saw a teenage girl who'd recently come to the Nairobi area for a job as a domestic worker, according to the Daily Nation, Kenya's largest newspaper. Having had one child already, she decided to get an abortion upon getting pregnant a second time. The teen went to Tali for help after being turned down elsewhere. Tali took the patient to an office—widely assumed by neighbors to be a dental clinic—and performed the abortion. Yet something went wrong and the woman started to bleed out. Tali wrapped her in sheets and drove her to a hospital, but it was too late. She died in the car.
Despite some loosening of the rules in recent years, the right to an abortion is still extremely limited in Kenya. Women are only allowed to receive one when necessary "for emergency treatment" in the eyes of a "trained health professional," or when the woman's life is in danger. Tali was a licensed registered nurse, and when the girl came to his home seeking help, she was allegedly in severe pain, but it's unclear if her condition was a medical emergency under Kenyan law.
Tali's wife told the Daily Nation that he only wanted to help the woman. The judge presiding over the case, however, didn't think his good intentions mattered. "The only question is, who interfered with the fetus?" he asked in his ruling. "It is only the accused who can answer since he attempted to secure the abortion…He has killed two people; a fetus and a mother. The only sentence available in law is the death penalty."
Read more: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/kenyan-nurse-sentenced-hang-death-botching-abortion
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