Ghanaian doctor and former health minister of Ghana, Dr Eunice Brookman-Amissah has been recognised for “pioneering discussions on women’s reproductive rights in Africa and paving the way for liberalised abortion laws and improved safe abortion access”.
Brookman-Amissah who is among the Right Livelihood Award winners for 2023 says she hopes it’ll bring the world’s focus on the issue of unsafe abortions, especially in Africa.
During an interview with BBC, she said it was a “great honour” to be recognised and to receive the award, and hoped it would further strengthen their hand to safeguard the rights of women who “are dying every day” from unsafe abortions.
She said abortion “has been criminalised in most African countries, is not desirable and is taboo and a lot of stigma is attached to it”, adding that this prevented women from seeking assistance when it is required.
“Many health ministries don’t have the required services even when the law allows it so this leads to a lot of women undergoing unsafe abortions causing loss of lives and disabilities,” she told the BBC Newsday programme.
Using herself as case study, she was 14-year-old when she sought the termination of her pregnancy. The girl died two days later from a botched abortion, “to my eternal shame”.
“From there on, I decided that I would find out what abortion law in my country says. I found out that she could have been saved because as a 14-year-old she had been statutory-raped and the law allowed for safe abortion for cases of rape,” she said.