By Kapya Kaoma

As I read Bishop Joshua Banda’s, Roman Catholic Bishops’, and Ambassador Mwamba’s opposition to proposed amendments to the Penal Code, I wondered why these sinless persons shouldn’t be campaigning for the law that criminalizes both the man and the woman for an abortion. Women don’t impregnate themselves, we the men do. So why should they bear the burden alone? Most women are forced to abort due to economic reasons; men deny responsibility. Is it not time we pushed for amendments to the Penal Code that would level the playing field?

Ambassador Mwamba claimed that “proposed amendments” would not only decriminalize abortion and bigamy but also threaten “family values.” Which family values? We are a Christian nation of injustice, corruption, and lies! Aside from stigma in the public eye, abortion and bigamy won’t make any dent to our national identity.

Bishop Banda denounced the amendments on the most inhumane grounds–there is “no material disadvantage that has been suffered by any segment of Zambia’s population because of such laws.” Why? The public has not demonstrated against them. No Bishop Banda, families have suffered.

To start with, unsafe abortions cost lives. You may associate with the rich and powerful, but poor women, girls and children, are the daily victims of these colonial laws. Yet abortion was in Zambia long before Christianity. Missionary Edwin Smith’s 1915-1920 study of the Ila of Zambia proved that they had excellent traditional methods of abortion, which women freely employed as family planning methods. This is true with all tribes.

Roman Catholic Bishops, Mwamba, and Bishop Banda don’t understand that under the African Union article 14 of the Maputo Protocol, which Zambia ratified on May 2 2006, medical abortion is legal for a reason. It is part of gender rights. Of course, the Constitution defines life as beginning “at conception,” but it also permits medical abortion under certain conditions to be determined by the woman and the doctors.

As ideological offshoots of the American Christian Right and the Vatican, Bishop Banda and Roman Catholic Bishops may term Constitutional mandated abortion as “abortion on demand.” But women don’t make such decisions lightly. Roman Catholic Bishops shouldn’t ignore the truth; Pope Francis asked his priests to forgive the sin of abortion after listening to women’s stories of why they chose to abort. Most women risk their lives out of desperation. So for the Bishop to claim there is “no material disadvantage” to aligning our laws with the Maputo Protocol is simply inhumane.

As males, we take the issue of abortion lightly. Yet every pregnant minor should be considered sexually assaulted. Are we suggesting that a ten-year-old should be forced to give birth despite the medical complications this may have on her life? Do young girls who die from unsafe abortions matter to Roman Catholic Bishops, Bishop Banda, and Mwamba? And why do only poor girls die from unsafe abortions? It is that simple. The rich and powerful are able to procure safe abortions for their own–another reason for this amendment.

The U.S. Christian Right and Roman Catholic mantra “life begin at conception” may sound great, but what does it mean? No medical family planning or birth control options like pills, patches, etc–designed to act after initial conception. For this reason, the Roman Catholic Church opposes contraceptives. Is Zambia opting for “natural family planning” over medical contraceptives? And how many Roman Catholics and Pentecostals use contraceptives despite their churches deeming them sinful?

Abortion is a very sensitive issue, but also a life and death issue. We may criminalize it, but many are the women and girls who rather procure unsafe abortions or die than carry the pregnancy to term. The human question is, “is a poor girl’s life also worth protecting?” Abortion rights are not just about women controlling their own bodies, but safeguarding victims of sexual abuse, rape, forced marriage, incest, and poverty. To ascertain how one got pregnant falls on the woman’s own testimony–another reason why she has to make that choice. Anti-abortion activists only protect life while it is in the woman’s womb, but once out, it becomes the poor woman’s burden. In most cases, such kids end up on the streets as if the streets fathered them.

Second, like Mwamba, Roman Catholic Bishops and Bishop Banda are concerned that plural marriages will impact the health of monogamous marriages in the Christian nation. Bishop Banda specifically employed national divorce figures (20,000, and 26 000 divorces registered in 2021 and 2020 respectively) to argue that legalizing plural marriages would worsen infidelity, adultery and domestic violence in monogamous marriages. There is no scientific evidence for such claims if compared to other African countries like Zimbabwe where plural marriages are legalized and exist along with monogamous marriages. What else explains the hypocrisy more than Jesus’s words, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”? (John 8.7) If religious leaders have failed to instill morals in their members, why should the government do it? We are not a theocracy, but a democracy!

The need for the amendments rests on the fact that women and children from plural marriages face inheritance legal problems as colonial laws didn’t acknowledge them as official marriages. To bring them in line with monogamous marriages, we need to legalize them as other African countries like Zimbabwe, Kenya, South Africa, and Swaziland among many others have done. Children of plural marriages never made that choice–something the Church should be advocating as a cause of justice.

One church may not allow plural marriages, but that does not mean the country shouldn’t. Neither does it mean Muslims, African Initiated Churches, and of course, traditional cultures who practice plural marriages are less Zambian. At the end of the day, we are a secular state. Mr. Mwamba and Bishop Banda may marry one wife, but others will marry more based on traditional norms. It is their right to choose which one they want. But the widows and children of those marriages should have the same protection and rights under the law!

The Christian nation mantra shouldn’t be used to stop progressive laws in the nation. Religion is not legislated; it is the work of bishops, pastors, and priests and not politicians to make people adhere to religious norms. After all, not every Zambian is a Christian!