Editorial | Add secret balloting to Standing Orders

In Jamaica’s febrile environment on the subject, the proposal by the Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CAPRI) that a parliamentary vote on the legalisation of abortion be by secret ballot is eminently sensible. At this time, it would be the only way to ensure that members of parliament (MPs) genuinely vote their conscience. If that were the case, we harbour no doubt that the vote would be overwhelmingly in favour of removing the legal ban on the termination of pregnancies.

Our preference, of course, would be that Prime Minister (PM) Andrew Holness, whip his MPs to vote in favour of the legislation as a fundamental matter of policy. He is unlikely to do that. And some parliamentarians will waiver. In that case, the question is whether the PM will embrace CAPRI’s idea and make it happen in a Parliament with no tradition of secret voting and whose Standings Orders, on the face of it, do not allow for it.

In the event, Mr Holness should propose an urgent amendment of Standing Order 46 to allow for the use of secret ballots in some matters where a division is called. Fortuitously, the House Standing Orders Committee has recently been reviewing the rules, so adding this to their agenda would be easy. They just need to speed up their work.

However, should the committee fail to act in a timely fashion, creative thinking by the Speaker, Marisa Dalrymple-Philibert, could, perhaps, produce a work-around. Indeed, this newspaper believes that the matter is so important that all possibilities should be immediately under consideration.

POOR PENALISED

First, though, this matter of modernising Jamaica’s archaic abortion law has lingered for far too long. We have been at it for more than 45 years. And like too many bits of social legislation in Jamaica, it primarily penalises the poor.

Sections 72 and 73 of the Offences Against the Person Act make it a felony for a woman, whether on her own or with the assistance of others, to have an abortion. If found guilty of the offence she can be jailed for life, at hard labour. Anyone who assists her can be jailed for three years. Yet, by some estimates, Jamaican women have up to 22,000 abortions annually.

Unfortunately, the majority of those are backstreet jobs on poor women, who, unlike their well-to-do, and usually better-educated counterparts, cannot afford to pay discreet health professionals for the procedure. Indeed, over 40 per cent of the complications in pregnancies that reach the Government’s Victoria Jubilee Hospital in Kingston has to do with botched abortions.

Put differently, the inequality of access to safe abortions is a costly public health and social problem. It has remained this way because vocal conservative interests, whose perceived power to influence larger blocs of votes at election time, have not accepted the universal fact of a woman’s right to her body must include her right to determine what she does with an unviable foetus in her womb, in consultation with her doctor and whoever else she wishes to admit into that circle. That should change. The law must liberate a woman’s right to choose.

It is against this backdrop that we continue to support the passage of a Termination of Pregnancy Act that would allow a woman to terminate, with her doctor, a pregnancy of up to 12 weeks. For pregnancies up to 22 weeks, terminations would be done in a more robust health environment, with the patient’s right to privacy fully guaranteed.

We hoped that two decades into the 21st century this fundamental right of choice would be a policy matter, to which a brave government would give its full support. Our sense is that the recommendation by Parliament’s Human Resources and Social Development Committee that the issue be put to a conscience vote was its way of freeing the administration of having to make this firm policy commitment.

The problem, in the event of regular division – which is what the recommendation for a conscience vote would translate to – is that several MPs would not really vote their conscience and risk being targeted by anti-abortionists. First, therefore, even as additions are made to existing rules, Speaker Dalrymple-Philibert must engage her legal counsels to determine whether there is anything in the language of either the Constitution or the Standing Orders that could facilitate a secret ballot.

Further, the Speaker could, informally, have Leader of the House Edmund Bartlett and the leader of opposition business conduct a sounding of their caucus to confirm that there is clear support for a repeal of the anti-abortion law. The Government, in that case, confident of strong support across the aisle, could proceed with a voice vote.