PRESIDENT HICHILEMA’S REMARKS DEFENDING THE UNBORN CHILD, WELCOME- Amb. Emmanuel Mwamba

PRESIDENT HICHILEMA’S REMARKS DEFENDING THE UNBORN CHILD, WELCOME

Amb. Emmanuel Mwamba Wrote;

It is coming together very well.

The rights of the unborn child must be protected, and the thousands of lives brutally taken away must be stopped and prevented.

I was warmed to hear President Hakainde Hichilema speak for the rights of the unborn children and their fundamental right to life at the 2025 Human Rights Day.

I was encouraged when the Catholic Church, particularly the Lusaka Archdiocese, launched a significant pro-life initiative involving the “Voice of the Unborn” Bell, blessed by Pope Francis in 2023.

In 2012, as Permanent Secretary in Northern Province, I was poring over data, information, and reports regarding the economic, social, and cultural status of the province to continue to craft initiative and development programs.

I stumbled on an alarming health report from the Provincial Medical Office.

An organisation was conducting reproductive health programs and cervical cancer screening.in the province.

Of concern however, was the section of “safe abortions,” where details stated that the organization was terminating up to 400 pregnancies per month.

I was alarmed by this report because of two key issues, my personal values and christian belief, and secondly, I believed the wanton abortions were being carried out against the law.

After summoning the experts from the provincial health office, I was satisfied that the program involving termination of pregnancies was violating the law and contrary to our laws.

The Termination of Pregnancy (TOP) Act of 1972 legalizes abortion but under strict and specific conditions including; the requirement that 3 medical doctors must assess the risk to the mother’s life/health, or substantial fetal deformity.

The emphasis was that the process required approval from three doctors (including a specialist) and that such a procedure MUST be performed in a hospital.

It was clear that the organization was flouting the various provisions of law with utter impunity.

I was struggling to have a doctor at hospitals in the province, and I couldn’t therefore fathom how such a program could find 3 doctors, including a specialist, to conduct 400 abortions in the province every month.

I immediatel banned the organisation in my province and made the announcement.

Well, apparently, this was no ordinary organisation. It was a giant, highly funded non-profit USA organisation called Marie Stopes International.

The story of my ban against abortions being carried out by Marie Stopes International was carried by both Lusaka and London’s BBC radio stations.

I faced such threats of dismissal that I was summoned to Lusaka to a meeting urgently convened by the Vice President, Guy Scott.

I’ve written about this story several various times.

Since then, and sadly the Ministry of Health has provided guidelines to literally circumvent and circumscribe the explicit 1972 law including allowing the organisation to open abortion clinics and somehow decriminalising abortions by preventing health personnel to demand for a police report when a case of abortion appears at the clinic or hospital as required by the law.

The “social conditions” of the mother that has been included has been expanded to literally allow abortions as an over-the-counter service and to use poverty as an strange but major reasons why abrtions must be accessed.

Marie Stopes was a contraversial British scientist, author, and advocate for birth control who opened the UK’s first birth control clinic in 1921, becoming a key figure in family planning.

The organization named after her, MSI Reproductive Choices (formerly Marie Stopes International), is a global non-profit providing reproductive healthcare (contraception, safe abortion) and advocating for sexual health, though the original Stopes held controversial eugenic views, which the organization now actively distances itself from in its mission for choice.

Marie Stopes Zambia operates two main health centers in Lusaka and Ndola, in addition to providing its services through outreach teams and a social marketing program to pharmacies nationwide.

It is therefore important that President Hichilema follows up his stated views against abortions by encouraging the enactment of sound policies, the law that protects the unborn child whose rights are now flagrantly being taken away and whose life is brutally taken away under the guise of “safe abortions”.

It is imperative that President Hichilema partners with the Catholic Church and other organisations working in this space but have been crowded out by a well funded pro-choice lobby, to achieve this.