c. 1996 Religion News Service

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa _ Under this nation’s current abortion law, critics here say, poor women rarely manage to terminate a pregnancy legally and safely. But for affluent women it’s not a problem. They simply board a plane bound for Europe to obtain a safe abortion.

That may soon change.

In August, the South African Parliament is likely to enact legislation that will transform the current restrictive abortion law _ which allows abortion only until the sixth week of pregnancy in cases of rape or when the mother’s health is at risk _ into one of the most liberal in the world.

The proposed legislation would allow virtually universal access to abortion on demand up to the first 12 weeks of pregnancy and, under certain conditions, would make it available to women from 13 to 21 weeks of pregnancy. The measure would give women and girls the right to obtain an abortion without first getting permission from their husbands, parents or partners. And though minors seeking the procedure would be advised to inform their parents of their decision, they would not be required to do so.

Although the usual advocates and foes of abortion rights have joined the fray, the current abortion debate is replete with contradictions for South Africans struggling to balance personal moral beliefs with their support of a new government.

The new South African Constitution, approved by Parliament and expected to be certified by the South African Constitutional Court in August, ensures everyone in South Africa both”the right to life”and the right”to make decisions concerning reproduction and to security in and control over their body …” But nowhere are the contradictions more stark than within the ranks of the ruling African National Congress, which must give final approval to the law that will put the provisions of the Constitution into practice.

The abortion bill stands a good chance of passage precisely because the ruling ANC supports it. But the ANC has a number of devout Christians and Muslims in its ranks who differ with the party on the question of abortion.

The answer, many here argue, is an”open vote”on the issue, in which members of Parliament would be allowed to abstain or vote against the party line, as often occurs among Democrats and Republicans in the United States.

But South Africa is a parliamentary democracy, whose voters choose a party, not individual members. Thus, the ANC argues, members of Parliament must vote with the party and not as individuals.

The Rev. Frank Chikane, a minister with the Apostolic Faith Mission and the former general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, has been a leader in pushing for an open vote. Chikane, who is also a top adviser to South African Vice President Thabo Mbeki, recently co-authored a paper supporting the concept of an open vote.

The paper, titled”Freedom of Conscience and Party Discipline,”argues that the ANC should allow an open vote. Chikane and co-author John de Gruchy write that to require members to vote with the party on this issue would force”some members into a situation where they have to either be disloyal to the ANC or else deny their own religious or moral integrity.” De Gruchy, of the Research Institute on Christianity in South Africa at the University of Cape Town and one of the nation’s leading Protestant theologians, said,”we don’t try to put forth a position on the abortion issue, we simply think members of Parliament should be able to make their own decision on an issue of such huge moral proportions.” De Gruchy, who says he supports the new bill, nevertheless argues that there are a number of Christians and Muslims in the ANC who should be able to vote their consciences.”All the ANC is doing is trying to live up to a promise of gender equality,”said the Rev. Albert Nolan, a Roman Catholic theologian with the Johannesburg-based Institute for Contextual Theology, an ecumenical think tank with a liberal bent.”But now that the vote is coming up, many of the ANC members realize they are facing a big moral dilemma.” Nolan points to South Africa’s only Roman Catholic nun in Parliament, Sister Bernard Ncube, as an example. Before her election to Parliament in 1994, Sister Ncube, 64, a member of the Companions order, worked among the rural poor and was arrested and detained on several occasions during the apartheid era. Although the Vatican frowns on the involvement of priests and nuns in politics, Ncube has maintained on several occasions that in South Africa, political and religious life cannot be separate.

Sister Ncube, for her part, has made no public statements on how she will vote on the measure.”Just look at her situation,”said Nolan.”She is a Catholic. But she is also a woman active in gender issues and she is an ANC member who worked very hard for the party during the struggle against apartheid.” While the South African Catholic Bishops Conference, the evangelical Protestant Rhema Church and several Muslim groups have lobbied heavily against the abortion bill, it remains to be seen how individual Catholics and Muslims in Parliament will vote. The Anglican Church in South Africa remains divided on the issue, though former Archbishop Desmond Tutu said last year that he considered abortion a”moral option”in some circumstances.

Although Methodist Bishop Peter Storey of Johannesburg says he supports the abortion measure”in broad outline,”he also has argued vehemently for an open vote in Parliament.”It would be arrogant,”Storey wrote in Johannesburg’s weekly newspaper The Sunday Independent,”for any political party to demand adherence to a party line when abortion is debated in Parliament. Let conscience decide.” Most here, including advocates of abortion rights, say the open vote will probably not garner the necessary votes to defeat the abortion bill by a simple majority. The ANC currently has 252 seats in Parliament, while the opposition parties combined make up only 148. A defection of 53 ANC legislators on the issue seems unlikely.

And while the philosophical arguments may be vigorous in favor of an open vote, political pragmatism will likely win out. Proponents of the measure argue that the ANC should live up to its commitment to swiftly approve a liberal abortion bill. The risk of a political defeat so early in the life of the new government could be disruptive, proponents of the measure argue. Furthermore, they say, every ANC candidate for Parliament was aware of the party promise and now should be held to the party position.”The present (law) discriminates against the poor, who are mostly black in this country, and the ANC has an obligation to rectify that,”said Cathi Albertyn, the head of gender research at the Center for Applied Legal Studies in Johannesburg.

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A recent study conducted by the South African Medical Research Council seems to support Albertyn and other abortion rights advocates.

The study showed that 2,180 abortions were performed in South Africa in 1994. Although whites make up only 16 percent of the population, 61.3 percent of the legal abortions were performed on white women from middle class urban backgrounds. In contrast, the survey showed that more than 44,000 women were treated at hospitals in 1994 for complications related to incomplete abortions. Some 84 percent of these women were black, 11 percent were of mixed race, 4 percent were Asian and 1 percent were white.

Even for moderates who support abortion rights, like Methodist Bishop Storey, the debate has a particular anguish.”My own feeling is that the bill will pass, and I am quite anxious to see it pass,”Storey added.”But the real issue here is for the few people who object to be allowed to vote their conscience or abstain.

MJP END FLEMING