Women should not be forced to keep pregnancies: Abortion Support

An organisation called Abortion Support says women should not be forced to keep their pregnancies against their will.

The aim of the commemoration of the day is to raise awareness of access to safe and legal abortion care.

The organisation’s spokesperson Victoria Satchwell has advised women that abortion is not a crime.

She was speaking during the Commemoration of International Safe Abortion Day in Braamfontein, Johannesburg.

“One of the most important things to say is stigmatising, when you have to go to a back street provider, then it can make you feel more ashamed or it can make you feel like what you doing isn’t right. But of course that’s not true because abortion is a very normal thing to do. One in four women in South Africa are having an abortion, so it’s very common and what can also happen with unsafe providers is maybe they are not giving you the effective methods, maybe your abortion does actually work or might end up in a hospital because you have some complications from the unsafe procedure,” says Satchwell.