A U.S. Company Testing Chemical Abortion on Women in Africa: Church Leaders’ Take

“In Burkina Faso, the increasingly commonplace nature of abortion and an abortion mentality is a cause for concern,” 74-year-old Cardinal Ouedraogo who Shepherds Burkina Faso’s Ouagadougou Archdiocese disclosed and recalled the continual appeal by Bishops “on leaders to take appropriate and discerning action to preserve our nation from this specter of the culture of death.”

He added, “Nowadays, those who are single as well as couples are often confronted with distress and dramas of conscience. Young people, pupils and students, in this century of libertine and sexual liberalization, are not immune to this phenomenon.”

For 60-year-old Bishop Euzébius Chinekezy Ogbonna Managwu of Gabon’s Port-Gentil diocese, the abortion tests on African women are part of an uninformed “need to limit the population of Africans” and a manifestation of “a desire to hurt Africa,” sentiments echoed by Bishop Dèr Raphaël Kusiélé Dabiré of Diébougou in Burkina Faso.

Bishop Kusiélé described the abortion tests as attempts “to eliminate or diminish Africa, to deprive Africa of its future or at least to undermine Africa's moral and spiritual values.”

The Burkinabe Prelate viewed the abortion tests as taking advantage of the ignorance of African women since “the girls or women who take part in such acts are sometimes very ignorant of what they are getting into.”

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“In the context of Burkina Faso, it is because the law is not applied to them that NGOs today take the advantage to bring in abortion ideologies into our country,” Bishop Kusiélé, 71, lamented in an interview with ACI Africa. 

The Episcopal Chair for Health under the conference of Bishops of Burkina Faso and Niger, Bishop Justin Kientega confirmed Bishop Kusiélé’s claim that women involved in the abortion tests are ignorant of the clinical procedures.

“It is underhanded that many women are led into practices whose consequences they are completely unaware of. Even contraceptives, the pills and everything else in there,” Bishop Kientega who heads Burkina Faso’s Ouahigouya diocese said.

In the face of this reality of ignorance on the part of the women recruited for the abortion tests, the Burnabe Prelate who also heads Caritas Burkina Faso said, “We are thinking about what we can do to tell people the truth, to women and girls, so that they are not led into practices that are harmful to their health and the health of the child.”

“We hope to be able to enlighten people so that we can have the clarity of all the facts that are there,” 60-year-old Bishop Kientega said and expressed the hope that with time, “consciences will become clearer. We hope that everyone will therefore take common sense and adopt a good attitude.”

Contributing to the narrative of foreign entities taking advantage of the limitations of a section of Africans, Bishop Prosper Kontiebo of Burkina Faso’s Tenkodogo diocese considers the abortion tests as part of the economic influences of wealthy organizations on Africans.

“It is a world that operates on the grip of love for money and so we often do not have the courage to say no and keep our dignity in poverty,” Bishop Kontiebo told ACI Africa and lamented, “We will prefer to follow wealth by living a culture that is not quite our own.”

“All these ideologies that are detrimental to our country thrive because men have refused to impose a minimum of discipline on their lives that we have all the drifts today around sexuality,” the 59-year-old Burkinabe Prelate said referencing abortion tests undertaken in his country by the U.S.-based research company, Gynuity Health Projects.

“Everyone knows that this Study by this NGO and other related campaigns in Burkina Faso are an incentive for children and young people in particular to depravity,” Bishop Kontiebo disclosed and decried, “Unfortunately, in the name of money, our governments sometimes prefer to sacrifice the people for aid even if they destroy society.”

For the Archbishop of Togo’s Lome Archdiocese, Nicodeme Barrigah, the language employed by entities advocating for abortion including the U.S.-based Gynuity Health Projects is strategized to convince.

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“What I would say is that the language used by institutions is a seductive language. It is a beautiful language that finally succeeds in convincing even people who have a very good intention,” the Togolese Prelate told ACI Africa and added, “We use this language without realizing that behind it there may be a whole ideology being conveyed.”

In part three of this four-part report, Church leaders in Africa go beyond the just described contexts on the continent within which foreign entities seem to promote a culture of death and express their condemnation of the abortion tests.