Abortion should be made legal in madagascar

PRESENTATION DRAFT

Hello everyone, my name is X, I’m an A2C student, as you’ve certainly guessed it, and it’s really a great pleasure for me to be with you tonight.
Ok, before I start my presentation, would you allow me guys to ask these ladies one question?
Right, so ladies: among all the fundamental rights that shall be recognized to women, which one, according to you, is unfortunately andstill shamefully prohibited in Madagascar.
Yes/No(Ok, it’s the abortion and it’s actually the focus of my presentation today. In fact, I firmly believe that abortion should be made legal in Madagascar!

Introduction: What is exactly an abortion: an abortion can be defined, in our case, as a voluntary termination of pregnancy. Contrary to most of the western countries which have legalized thispractice, abortion is still penally sanctioned strongly in Madagascar: in fact, the criminal code provides between 6 months to 10 years of imprisonment to people who’d been involved in this practice.
In an era when human rights have been put as a worldwide ideal for each society to reach for, I strongly believe that it’s high time that we be aware now of the necessity for this country to haveabortion legalized.
Outline:
Of course, not only will the anti-abortionists claim that such decision would equal a legalization of manslaughter (cf status of the fertilized cells issue), but it would also set out a legal deny of the consequences of abortion on women’s body. Not to mention the fact, besides this, that legalization of abortion would also imply large abuses according to them.

Toconvince you to join my position on the issue despite all these pro-life arguments, I’ve divided my talk into 3 parts:
-Firstly, I will prove you that to forbidden is not a solution regarding the abortion issue.
-Then, I’ll show you why legalization equals giving the choice to women.
-And finally, we will see that contrary to what pro-life supporters are advocating, a legalization on abortionwould rather tightened the control on this practice than let it uncontrolled.

My talk shall take just about 10 min, so if you have any question, please keep them at the end of my presentation.

1) Ok, let’s start with the first part: in abortion matters, to forbid is not a solution.
In fact, the official figures from International organizations such as the WHO as well as from nationalorganizations or authorities show that the more a country set out a severe ban on abortion, the more such a situation puts women and motherhood in danger in these countries. Indeed, according to the WHO, each year around 300 000 women are dying from backstreets abortion in Africa because they are legally denied an access to accurate termination of pregnancy. What’s more, according to the sameorganization, 44% of backstreets abortions throughout the world are occurring in Africa because of such strong prohibition.
Here, in Madagascar, surveys led by students from both the university of Paris and the university of Antananarivo have showed that among 8198 cases of hospitalization recorded at the maternity hospital of Befelatanana, 1432 were caused by the after-effects of backstreets abortion(haemorrhage, womb perforation and so forth…).
Moreover, another survey led upon the civil status data (within the period from 1985 to 1995) throughout the greatest cities in Madagascar have showed that the main cause of motherhood mortality was nothing else but backstreets abortions.
Right here, you can see therefore the striking bad consequences that the ban is causing on women’s health.
Butapart from the backstreets abortion and its after-effects, these figures are proving to us that despite the prohibition, abortion is a current practice for African and Malagasy women in particular. A situation admitted furthermore by Malagasy authorities: indeed, the Ministry of Health released a survey on abortion 6 years ago (in 2004) that admitted that each year, about 7500 women are having…