So-called ‘pro-family’ campaigners who glorify motherhood and encourage women to give birth (and often also oppose the use of contraception) have been strangely unmoved by the traumas experienced by women giving birth during COVID-19.
Under lockdowns across Africa, pregnant women have missed check-ups, been denied care at health facilities, resorted to risky home births and died in childbirth. In Kenya, one woman named Vidia Nduku died after boda boda drivers refused to take her to hospital, fearing trouble with the police during a dawn-to-dusk curfew.
For ‘pro-family’ campaigners, sex should lead to pregnancy and pregnancy to childbirth. You’d think they would be speaking out about increasingly risky pregnancies. Instead, it is human rights groups like the Kenya Legal and Ethical Issues Network and Women’s Link Worldwide that are defending pregnant women.
