When Abortion is a Crime: Women Behind Bars in Senegal

By Jeanne Hefez

During his campaign to become president of the United States, Donald Trump stated that he would “punish” women for seeking abortion care, presaging a frightening future for American women. But for women in Senegal, where abortion is already a crime and you can be thrown in jail for pregnancy outcomes such as having a miscarriage, such conditions are already a reality. Much has transpired since Donald Trump made that campaign promise, including a Women’s March in which millions of people in the U.S. and around the world took to the streets in protest of the Trump administration. But with numerous anti-immigrant, anti-woman and anti-choice measures still on the table in the U.S., it’s an important time to look more closely at how criminalization of pregnancy outcomes in Senegal has impacted the women, families and communities there, and how advocates are currently fighting back.

Senegal’s abortion laws are some of the most punitive in the world. A shocking 38 percent of incarcerated women are in jail for pregnancy-related crimes, which include abortions, miscarriages and infanticide. They are thrown in prisons that are often overpopulated and unsanitary.

“To be honest, the most shocking thing for me is to see women in jail with their babies.”

Khady Ba, a Senegalese lawyer in the capital city of Dakar, describes the scene in these jails, with pregnant women isolated in specific building blocks. “To be honest, the most shocking thing for me is to see women in jail with their babies,” says Khady, shaking her head vigorously at the thought.

How did we get here? In Senegal, according to the country’s criminal code, it is a crime to have an abortion, to perform an abortion, to publicly speak about abortion, or even to distribute any printed materials mentioning it. Despite these legal restrictions, approximately 51,000 abortions occur annually in Senegal. This isn’t surprising, given that a third of pregnancies are unintended, and nearly one in three women become pregnant by age 18. And unfortunately, such restrictive conditions virtually guarantee that most of these occur under unsafe conditions.

Because of the criminalization of abortion, “women usually try to get rid of their pregnancies on their own through traditional methods,” says Khady. These methods usually entail traditional medicines. But if that fails, she explains, desperate women often resort to more “barbaric techniques.”

“We only know about the ones with health complications because they’re sent to hospitals, where the service provider is legally obligated to report on them.”

A fearless lawyer, Khady has been working at l’Association des Femmes Juristes Sénégalaises (Association of Women Lawyers of Senegal, AJS), a partner of Planned Parenthood Global, for the past seven years. She says the already high numbers of reported unsafe abortion procedures are likely even higher. “We only know about the ones with health complications because they’re sent to hospitals, where the service provider is legally obligated to report on them,” she says. This is a result of the punitive measures threatening not only a woman who seeks abortion care, but the doctor who aids her. While the punishment for women who have had an abortion is incarceration for up to five years, health care providers who do not report an abortion are at risk of being charged with the same sentence as their patient, plus a license suspension of at least five years. Those who come to the clinic for post-abortion care are reported to the police and can be detained until the arrival of law enforcement.

AJS provides pro-bono legal assistance to clients with little or no income. “Often women can’t afford legal representation, so they come to us,” Khady explains. Because of judicial oversight, many women are kept in jail without seeing a lawyer for up to nine months as part of “preventive detention.” In a visit to one of the women’s wards, AJS learned that of the 152 women they interviewed, only 42 had been officially charged and half of them didn’t even know who their lawyers were or how their cases were progressing.

Alongside their daily work defending these women, the organization is tirelessly fighting a legal and constitutional crusade to harmonize Senegal’s penal code with the the Maputo Protocol, which makes abortion legal in cases of rape, incest or threat to the mother’s life. Though Senegal ratified the protocol in 2005, the penal code lags far behind and remains inconsistent with international standards.

“We have ratified conventions that show that Senegal is committed to giving alternative sentences to these young mothers,” says Khady, explaining why her organization pursues this strategy. “This is why we’re using the legal texts: as an argument against the cultural institutions that remain an obstacle to women’s health and autonomy.”

For incarcerated women in Senegal, the effects of being imprisoned on abortion-related charges are particularly disastrous for family ties. Socio-cultural norms consider prison to be a highly shameful place and abortion to be a crime. Families are rarely informed of the fate of loved ones, and the weight of the stigma will often prevent them from visiting. Children are discouraged from seeing their mothers in prisons, and phone calls are scarcely allowed.

The threat of prosecution perpetuates a fear and stigma that deters other women from seeking out care. The penalties imposed — arrest, imprisonment, and family separation — create negative health and social consequences for women and society.

“Criminalizing abortion doesn’t stop women’s need for abortion — it leads to more unsafe abortion.”

“Sexuality is such a taboo topic here,” says Khady. “There is the fear of others and their judgment, of stigmatization, and dishonor. It’s a very complex question. We should really see more support for women but the cultural context isn’t conducive to it. We are everyone’s favorite enemy. Religious leaders are against us. They hold themselves as the guarantors of morality, and we’re obliged to collaborate with them.”

Morality aside, when it comes to reducing abortion rates, punitive abortion laws just don’t work. Data shows that restrictive abortion laws are not associated with lower abortion rates. Criminalizing abortion doesn’t stop women’s need for abortion — it leads to more unsafe abortion and increased maternal mortality. Estimates from 2012 show that nearly seven million women in developing countries are treated for complications from unsafe abortion annually. Many women, however, never receive care. Some 22,000 women die of unsafe abortion annually, making it one of the leading causes of maternal mortality.

The future is not without hope, and popular will has leverage, as the recent protests in Poland have shown us. Incredible and resilient community members from lawyers to doctors to advocates like Khady are working together tirelessly to increase women’s access to sexual and reproductive health care in Senegal and around the world.

“Our law on gender parity was pushed through thanks to the strength of women. And AJS was born out of the resilience of eminent jurists in Senegal, who had a very critical eye on the condition of women,” says Khady. “This fight is about us, about saving the health of Senegalese women.”

Jeanne Hefez is a Global Health Corps Fellow with Planned Parenthood Global. Prior to her fellowship, she worked on a variety of social justice and political media initiatives in South Africa, where she lived for five years.