With the House controlled by Republicans, the Senate by Democrats, and an election looming, there is virtually no chance either bill will become law.
Editar Ochieng didn’t tell her parents about her rape and pregnancy and didn’t go to a hospital. The stigma of abortion was too great, she told me, noting that even songs characterized the procedure as a crime. As a high school student, Ochieng couldn’t afford the 20,000 Kenyan shillings—roughly $280 in 2006—to pay for a safe abortion, or even the 3,000 shillings—less than $43 at the time—for an unsafe abortion. She borrowed money from a close friend, who took it from her college fund.
Now 35, Ochieng is no longer secretive. She’s a social justice advocate and feminist leader who strives to improve the lives of women and girls who are victims of poverty, violence, and inequality. In 2016, she founded Feminist for Peace, Rights and Justice Centre, which works to empower young women by developing their leadership skills. She shares her personal story in an attempt to change how Kenyans perceive abortion and to prevent others—including her two daughters—from going through the trauma she endured.
If she doesn’t, she believes, “the violence will be a circle every day, and it will make all of us vulnerable.” So she turned her life into “a public school.” “When I decided to share my story with the women around me, it has really shifted the way they think about abortion, and they don’t judge people.… I get calls like every week from women who want to abort, and I have a number that I will give them so that they can access a safe abortion.” She tells the women to say that Editar sent them so that the cost will be subsidized.
Her activism has elicited enemies—often men who instruct their wives or partners not to associate with her—but Ochieng remains steadfast. To this day, she said, she knows “so many” women who have died from unsafe abortions. But because of the patriarchal culture, strict prohibitions, and very real fear of punishment, she said, families often conceal the cause of death and strain, or even decline, to eulogize their loved ones.
Things could be different, Ochieng and other abortion rights advocates said, if Washington would end the restrictive policies that placate American conservatives but jeopardize the health and lives of women outside U.S. borders. The effect would be most pronounced in countries with broad abortion rights. Even in places like Kenya, it would shrink the number of unsafe abortions and maternal deaths and, potentially, begin to change the oppressive culture, women there said. “When the U.S. is making any decision, the reality is it affects directly a woman who is on the ground and a woman who is very, very poor,” Ochieng said. “We cannot wait for so many women to die to have change.”
This article was produced in collaboration with The Fuller Project.