Raped 10 Year Old Girl Prevented From Aborting 5 Month Old Pregnancy By Senegalese Law.

Senegalese lawyer Fatou Kiné Camara has branded her
 country's abortionlaw one of the harshest and deadliest in Africa

A 10-year-old girl who is pregnant with twins after she was raped by a neighbour has been forced to continue with her pregnancy after human rights campaigners lost their fight to secure a legal route to abortion.

The plight of the girl, who is five months pregnant and lives in Ziguinchor in the south, highlights the heavy cost women and children are paying for a Napoleonic law on abortion that is still in force in the former French colony.

"She is going to have to go through with the pregnancy," said Fatou Kiné Camara, president of the Senegalese women lawyers' association. "The best we can do is keep up pressure on the authorities to ensure the girl gets regular scans and free medical care.

"Senegal's abortion law is one of the harshest and deadliest in Africa. A doctor or pharmacist found guilty of having a role in a termination faces being struck off. A woman found guilty of abortion can be jailed for up to 10 years."

Forty women were held in custody in Senegal on charges linked to the crimes of abortion or infanticide in the first six months of last year, official figures show. According to estimates, hundreds of women die every year from botched illegal terminations.

"For a termination to be legal in Senegal, three doctors have to certify that the woman will die unless she aborts immediately. Poor people in Senegal are lucky if they see one doctor in their lifetime, let alone three," Camara said.

"A single medical certificate costs 10,000 CFA francs ($20), which is prohibitive. We had a previous case of a raped nine-year-old who had to go through with her pregnancy. We paid for her caesarean but she died a few months after the baby was born, presumably because the physical trauma of childbirth was too great."

The women lawyers' association is lobbying MPs to align Senegal's abortion legislation with theAfrican charter on women's rights, which the country ratified 10 years ago. Its provisions – legal medical abortion in cases of rape and incest, or where a woman's physical or mental health is threatened – have never been added to the statute book.

"The greatest unfairness is that the poor are the victims of our archaic legislation," said Camara, a law professor at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar. "Anyone with enough money can easily have an abortion at a private clinic. But if you are poor you are expected to go through the legal motions or risk your life in a backstreet clinic."

Camara said the parajuristes, who uncovered the plight of the 10-year-old, were her eyes and ears on the ground. Terminations in such extreme cases should be made legal, she added. "Senegal must legalise medicalised abortion so that we never see any more cases like hers. Had we had time and had the girl's parents been willing, we could have asked a judge to consider guaranteeing immunity from prosecution to an [abortion] doctor," she said. "However, the family is poor; the process is difficult enough for them. They were just pleased when the rapist was arrested."...culled