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Primary Submission Category: Health care/services
“They are doing it for the money:” Women’s Accounts of Healthcare Workers Providing Abortions in Uganda.
Authors: Charles Katulamu,
Presenting Author: Charles Katulamu*
Uganda criminalizes and restricts safe abortion care; coupled with stigma and inadequate healthcare resources, it is almost impossible for women to access care, as is the case in most sub-Saharan African countries. However, some girls and women have found ways to procure abortions from select healthcare workers, albeit. In this study, I seek to understand why some healthcare workers provide abortions despite the existing criminalization and restrictions around safe abortion care in Uganda.
Through semi-structured in-depth interviews, I spoke to 50 women who had ever terminated a pregnancy in Uganda to understand their perspectives on why healthcare workers provide abortions despite the existing criminalization and restrictions around abortion care in Uganda. Reports from women revealed that although some healthcare workers provided these abortions because they wanted to save women’s lives by preventing them from using unsafe abortion practices, they largely did so because of their financial motives. The criminalization and restriction of abortion prevent most providers from providing such care to avoid prosecution and protect their professions. Those who choose to provide the care do so at exorbitant costs to compensate for possible consequences. Additionally, in such circumstances, demand for the care exceeds supply, which also contributes to rising costs of obtaining it.
Therefore, for women to safely navigate such expenses, the country should adopt more progressive abortion laws to ensure (i) girls and women are able to access comprehensive abortion care, (ii) healthcare service providers are legally supported to provide the care, (iii) stigma against those who seek and provide abortion care is dismantled to weave support for women’s autonomy and reproductive choices, (iv) significantly reduce the financial burden associated with both abortion and post-abortion care, and (v) save women from life-threatening complications emerging from unsafe abortion practices.