Reading Peter Singer's Rethinking Life and Death, one realizes that abortion debates have been fuelled by misinformation, that morality is undebatable and unchangeable. Surprisingly, the church itself has been a major player in the misinformation game.

In the middle ages, Catholic philosophers like Thomas Aquinas held that the embryo was unformed until it got a soul at 'quickening,' the time a pregnant woman first feels the fetus moving within her -- roughly 40 days after conception in the [case of the] male fetus and 80 days for the female fetus. To carry out an abortion before 'quickening' wasn't seen as murder but as birth control! Only after modern science rejected this theory did the church dump the Aristotelian embryology of Thomas Aquinas.

The Vatican addressed the issue explicitly in the Holy Office Decree De Cranitomia et abortu in 1889, showing the first change in morality. Pope Pius XI set the first extreme level when he said that even if the life of the mother or the child, or both, are in danger of dying, no abortion should be done to save the mother ,for all life is sacred. Since Papal Decrees are generally taken as gospel truth, it is surprising that it was only in the 19th centu ry that England, followed by the U.S, wrote legislation that criminalized abortion.

Proponents of clinical abortion on medical grounds detest this and instead propose that all life is not sacred but that there are different degrees of quality of life. Indeed, consider the ainencephallic child. This child, [if born] is born without a brain. The top of the skull is usually absent from the eyebrow upwards, [there is] only a thin membrane of skin covering the head, filled with fluid. If a torch is lit on one side of the skull, light can be seen on the other side. Such a child can breathe, but will forever lie unconscious because they have no brain, that is, are cortically dead. <

Consider, too, the case[s] of babies with spina bifida. These are children born with a part of their spine split and the spinal cord exposed. The child thus has partial or complete paralysis of the legs, no ability to control bowel and bladder movements and intellectual disability. Consider also children born without intenstines. These cases are medically proven [to lead to] inevitable death. Within the first three months is the norm.

Knowing that [such cases] can be detected [by] modern technology before birth, is it morally wrong when a woman sees the ultra-sound scans and decides not to have the anencephallic child [or others listed above] who will die anyway?

Quoting the Hippocratic oath taken by practitioners of medicine, John Keown refutes such notions. "Traditional medical ethics," he says as quoted in Singer's book, "does not question whether the patient's life is worthwhile ... because all lives are intrinsically valuable, it is always wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being." (To say so implies that to allow a woman to intentionally die during childbirth is also criminal.)

The American Academy of Pediatrics, reacting after a furtive effort to follow President Reagan's moralist[ic] 'Baby Doe' decree in 1983, realized the folly of trying to cure infants who had incurable abnormalities and hence [were] not 'viable children'. In conjunction with the National Association of Children's Hospital and the Children's Hospital National Medical Centre, in Washington D.C., they went to court to have 'Baby Doe' regulations done away with. They told the judges there were three especially untreatable conditions: anencephaly, a brain haemorrhage that destroys the cortex and absence of the digestive tract (intenstines). Judge Gerhard struck down the Baby Doe guidelines, and though he may not have intended it, showed that qualities of life differ.

Even among the proponents, there are abortionists who want to have abortion for abortion's sake. For example, the claim that the embryo under three months is far more primitive than a frog or a fish, to quote Leonard Peikoff in his web article. He says it is ludicrous to compare an embryo to an infant, saying that such logic of equating the potential cells to the actual child is similar to calling any adult an 'undead corpse' and [then proceed to] bury him alive.

Modern science actually confuses us, for it says there is no precise 'moment' of conception, rather conception is a process lasting about 24 hours. When a sperm enters an egg, the outer layer [of the egg] locks up so that other sperm can't enter. The genetic material of the egg and sperm are still separate. Both pronucleus float apart and gradually draws together until the genetic material merges about twenty four hours after the sperm enters the egg. This stage is called syngamy and conception of a human being is not there until syngamy occurs.

The use of abortion as a fundamental right for the advancement of women is also [a] misrepresentation of an honourable movement. Such founding feminists as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton expressely disapproved abortin as murder. It was in 1960 that the need for making money out of pregnant women by way of abortion was [a] tailor-made [issue] to fit into the Feminist movement (See Answers To ProChoice.)

The argument for wholesale legalization of abortion -- because many [women were] dying in illegal backstreet abortions -- is also not backed by facts. Even in countries where abortion is legalized, many women will still die while under the hands of qualified medical physicians.

In a letter published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, April 29, 2004 by Dr. David Reardon, death rates associated with abortion are far higher than those associated with child birth. Quoting a case study in Finland, [the report asserts that] women who "have abortions are 76% more likely to die in the year following abortion compared to non-pregnant women."

Researchers saw that suicid[al] tendencies were seven times higher for women who had aborted as compared to those who gave birth. In many cases 'attempted or completed suicides have been intentionally or subconsciously timed to coincide with the anniversary date of the abortion, or expected due date of the aborted child". Women [were] also more likely to be sexually abused by [their] doctor before, during or long after he/she had conducted an abortion [according to these findings].

China, where the government encourages abortion under its one-child policy, has the highest suicide rates among women in the world. 56% of all female suicides in the world occur in China.

Women, immediately after abortion, have more deaths from risk-taking behaviour, as compared to those who give birth. Women who abort are more violent and love adventure. Drunkenness, drugs and substance abuse is the most common excuse for getting a pregnancy 'when I wasn't ready for it.' The end result is, after abortion, continuing with life on the fast lane [within which] such women will die in accidents or violence related activities.

Of course, there will be those proponents for abortion who will go that extra yard and claim abortion is biblical. True, nowhere in the gospel accounts did Jesus condemn or even specifically address abortion. However, this doesn't grant Brian Elroy McKinley the leeway to misquote the bible as he does to prove 'why abortion is biblical'. Such extremes prove to us that most players in the abortion debate are one sided and they need to smell the coffee and have accommodative views of the others.

It is not enough for the Minister for Health to remind us abortion is illegal while everyone knows you can get an abortion done in a hospital as easily as buying a Panadol for your headache. The law needs to be more precise on which cases can be considered for medical abortion. The laws [here in Kenya] should borrow from Denmark, whose parliament formed the Danish Council of Ethics in 1987 to advise the Minister for Health on various ethical aspects of health care, among them abortion.

The collapse of social support systems is an issue politicians need to address. Kenyans don't have adequate education on their reproductive health, especially women. The negative connotation given to condoms has meant many Kenyans shy away from buying condoms over the counter, yet very heroically rush to backstreets to terminate pregnancies. Adoption laws in Kenya also need a thorough review. People casually say that it you don't want a kid then take him or her to an adoption centre, but it is easier said than done. It is not easy to adopt nor give children for adoption in Kenya.

The church should also review its stand on medical abortion. One concurs with Peter Singer that the main reasons why the church can't support abortion on medical grounds is it will prove its moral hypocirisy. The pillar of Chirtian morality is sanctity of all life. All life has sanctity and thus we will embrace a social ethic where some human lives are valued and others are not.

All I ask is we don't abort the abortion debate by asking blanket questions. "Should abortion be legalized?" is a different question from "Please tell me whether or not you think it should be possible for a pregnant woman to obtain a legal abortion if there is a strong chance of serious defect to (a) the baby (b) the mother."

We need to ask such detailed questions to escape from the straitjacket of conservative morality, which -- among other things -- does not recognize abortion is not an event, it is a process that impacts on the mother long before and long after the deed is done. There is a new moral order of which abortion is a great opportunity to debate and expose our hypocrisy.

The recent involvement of the new Kenyan government in facilitating peace in the region, hence Col. Garang quitting war in Sudan , and the election of the new Somali government in Nairobi, Kenya, gave me hope that africa has matured enough to solve its own problems instead of begging the West to do so." This is his second article for The World's Magazine.