Ghanaian woman wins “Alternative Nobel Prize” award for work promoting safe abortions
One of this year’s Right Livelihood Award winners, commonly referred to as the “Alternative Nobel Prize,” is a Ghanaian doctor who says she hopes the award will draw attention to the problem of unsafe abortions, particularly in Africa.
It has been acknowledged that Dr. Eunice Brookman-Amissah pioneered “discussions on women’s reproductive rights in Africa and paving the way for liberalized abortion laws and improved safe abortion access”.
She told the media that it was a “great honor” to be recognized and receive the award and expressed the hope that it would strengthen their resolve to defend the rights of women who “are dying every day” from unsafe abortions.
She added that this prevented women from getting the help they needed because abortion “has been criminalised in most African countries, is not desirable and is taboo and a lot of stigma is attached to it”
“Many health ministries don’t have the required services even when the law allows it so this leads to a lot of women undergoing unsafe abortions causing loss of lives and disabilities,” she added.
She used the instance of a 14-year-old who sought her out earlier in the process to end her pregnancy as an illustration of her own experience. To my eternal shame, the girl died two days later as a result of a failed abortion.
“From there on, I decided that I would find out what abortion law in my country says. I found out that she could have been saved because as a 14-year-old she had been statutory-raped and the law allowed for safe abortion for cases of rape,” she said.
Source-BBC
