Dear Editor,

It is time that we stop trying to hide from those things that make us uncomfortable. The issue of abortion is a controversial one which usually leads to heated debates about a woman’s rights.

In her sectoral presentation to Parliament on June 18, 2013 Youth and Culture Minister Lisa Hanna said, “…abortion is still illegal in this country and a woman’s right to choose whether or not to keep her pregnancy is in effect exercised only by those who can afford a private doctor. This law is old, but we have been debating whether we are to change it for the past 38 years…”

I commend Minister Hanna for her forthrightness. It is no secret that too many of our children are having children. Many people point out cases of incest, rape and threats to the mother’s life as instances when an abortion is justified. It is barbaric to force any victim of rape, regardless of age, to carry to term a child that is the product of a most terrible act.

On the other side, opponents of abortion cite the loss of the potential life. They cite religious and moral considerations, but hindering such an important debate makes one guilty of gross inhumanity towards women and girls. The role of the State is to provide equity and fairness for all its citizens — not to accede to religious fundamentalists. Equating abortion with murder has been a cruel terror tactic of the religious right.

In the early 1990s violent crime in America started to fall. Over the next several years it curiously fell by 70% from the highs in 1970s. This puzzled lawmakers in the US for years, as crime fell uniformly in all 52 states.

In 2005, economist Steven Levitt laid out the reason in this book Freakonomics, a runaway best-seller. In 1970 a famous landmark court case, Roe vs Wade, went to the Supreme Court. The case was fought and won, causing abortion to become legal in all 52 states.

To quote Minister Hanna “.. sure enough the states with the highest abortion rates in the 1970s experienced the greatest crime reduction in the 1990s”. We have tried public education, family planning, and even greater access to contraceptives to reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies in Jamaica. Children having children and the inability to take care of them has become a disease with toxic consequences on the Jamaican society: unplanned pregnancies, children born in abject poverty, high numbers of young Jamaicans committing violent crimes, and the cost to the Government to maintain children’s homes and remand centres.

Indeed, it was Albert Einstein who said insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. No matter what one’s moral or religious position on this issue, the right of a woman to choose supersedes any religious or moral argument and should ultimately be codified in law.

Andrew King

abking020@gmail.com