KAMPALA – At exactly 3:21pm on August 25, Moses Odongo received a call informing him that his 14-year-old cousin Christine had died attempting to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. Odongo, who is 40, had just returned home and was sitting down for a drink and a bite to eat.

His grief at her untimely death quickly mixed with anger at Uganda’s restrictive abortion laws and conservative culture, which he believes killed her. “This is a problem we are all responsible for,” he said. “We have let down this girl. We have not provided [young] people with sex education … We do not allow anyone to even mention the word abortion.” Odongo is the founder and executive director of Family Medical Point, a nonprofit that carries out informational programmes and operates small health centres in Entebbe, a city neighbouring the Ugandan capital, Kampala.

This death felt personal. But it was also something he’d seen too often in his line of work. Abortion is highly restricted in Uganda. Both the women who seek it out and the doctors who provide it can face criminal prosecution. Uganda’s constitution says that abortion is illegal unless provided for under the law, but there is no definitive legislation on abortion in the country.

A colonial-era penal code punishes women terminating a pregnancy with seven years in prison and doctors performing the procedure with 14, unless the mother’s life is at risk. However, guidelines from the Ministry of Health contradict the penal code by also allowing abortion in cases of foetal anomalies and of rape. A more comprehensive set of instructions on when an abortion can be performed was issued and then withdrawn by the Ministry of Health in 2017. (Al Jazeera)