JAMAICA is currently grappling with the issue of legalising abortion.

It is an issue that has medical, social and religious implications and, from our experience in Barbados, it is one in which the strongest opposing arguments are made on religious grounds, but which cannot avoid leaving the last word to the pregnant woman.

The issue involves those who are "pro-choice", favouring the right of a woman to decide if she should have an abortion, and those who are regarded as "pro-life", maintain that once there is conception the emphasis must be on preserving the life of the foetus, with some supporters conceding that this stance should be changed only if the life of the woman is endangered by the pregnancy.

This approach might be considered a sophisticated one, since most women who have abortions are seldom caught up in pro-choice or pro-life arguments.

Long before any such arguments were raised in our part of the world women in slavery knew the bush (herbs) to boil to induce abortion rather than have children to be sold into slavery.

Long after slavery was abolished many Caribbean women were still resorting to "bush teas" to induce abortion for contraceptive purposes and it is this aspect that is at the root of the issue in our environment.

In seeking such abortions many women resort to "back-street operators" who place the women's lives at serious risk.

It is the risk involved that has prompted medical personnel to suggest that it would be better to legalise abortion, where the procedure can be carried out by those with medical skill rather than in back street environments.

One strong argument for this approach has been that more often than not, when the backstreet operations are botched, the victims end up in hospitals where the medical resources are then concentrated on saving their lives.

This has been the experience in Barbados and is now what Jamaica is facing.

This situation prompted medical sources to suggest that it would make more sense for women to have facilities at their disposal for abortions to be done after proper counselling and under proper medical supervision than in the "back street" environment.

Barbados managed to clear the medical hurdle some years ago, but the other aspects of the issue tend to surface from time to time with the ongoing arguments being the same as those now heard as Jamaica confronts the problem.

In that country, an Abortion Policy Review Advisory Group has recommended that the abortion law be changed to make abortion legal.

At present, it is illegal to perform abortions, except where it is felt that the pregnancy endangers the mother's life. The punishment for performing an illegal abortion is life imprisonment.

At the same time, abortions are performed with hardly any problems for women who can afford to pay to have them done professionally,
whose services and skill would be available at state medical institutions if the procedure was made legal.

In the present situation women who can pay have a better chance of surviving or avoiding any complications than those who cannot raise the money, even when it comes to purchasing abortion pills or drugs which need a prescription.

Yet it is not an argument that the church embraces, whatever the reality. In Jamaica churchmen have advised the government to reject the recommendation about legalising abortion.

However, it must be awkward to be making a "pro-life" stance in an environment where children already born are among the record numbers killed each year in ongoing violence in the country. But then it might be a case of what is seen as a lesser evil.