AlterNet

By Gillian Kane

If the African country's constitution is approved in its current form, it will join the ranks of three nations that have prohibited abortion in their constitutions.

February 16, 2010

If western media is your sole news source, you're likely to view the African women’s rights struggle as a one issue affair: female genital mutilation. But the battle over reproductive rights in Africa is just as fraught -- enmeshed in issues far thornier than the question of Super Bowl TV ads that has lately transfixed Americans on both sides of the abortion debate.

Take Kenya. For twenty years, Kenyans have been working fitfully to revise their constitution and are now mere weeks away from possibly finalizing the document. But this milestone in the nation's slow move towards real democracy may be marred by another human rights calamity. If the constitution is approved in its current form by the Kenyan Parliament sometime this year, Kenya will join the inglorious ranks of three nations -- Northern Mariana Islands, Uganda, and Zambia -- that have prohibited abortion within their constitution.