Meet Martha Hope, that’s not her real name. She was married with three children when she became pregnant again in 2010.
The 33-year-old woman said her husband told her he was not ready to bring up another child in poverty.
At six months, she visited a neighborhood clinic that was willing to provide an illegal abortion. The doctor mixed some concoctions for her to take. Martha says she started bleeding and that she sat in a bucket full of cold water.
“I was sweating and losing strength, the fetus came out, but now the problem was that the placenta did not. I passed out,” she said. Martha is now on medication for depression as a result of the trauma she experienced.
A 2018 report indicated that nearly half a million unsafe abortions occurred in Kenya in 2012.
Josephine Kamau, a nurse at Provide International Hospital in Dandora, says back alley abortions are all too common.
“We get three to four cases in a month in our facility,” she said, “but remember, there are others who die at home, who may have no one to bring them to the facility. Maybe they opted not to tell anybody.”
Kenyan health officials say unsafe abortions are common in the east African nation with nearly half a million in one recent year.
Abortion is prohibited unless, in the opinion of a trained health professional, there is need for emergency treatment, or the life or health of the mother is in danger.
Advocates for less restrictive policies argue that unsafe abortions contribute to a high level of maternal deaths.