Confident, educational documentary
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
African (General) South African (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
When it comes to affecting change, stories can be more powerful than facts and figures. This is a lesson from Zimbabwe where a community based organization called Roots use storytelling and dialogue to change attitudes towards reproductive health and rights and save women's lives. Zimbabwe is a highly religious society. Over three quarters of the population are Christian. Many people are socially conservative, especially when it comes to gender, sexuality and marriage, premarital sex is widely frowned upon. So it's difficult for young Zimbabweans to access contraception compounding. This issue is the 1977 termination of Pregnancy Act. This 40 year old law prevents women from accessing an abortion outside of a very narrow set of circumstances because of the restrictions. 70,000 Zimbabwean women risk illegal abortions each year. Tragically, almost one in three of young women who die from abortion related complications are only teenagers. Roots decided they had to do something about this situation. They knew the task ahead was huge. They would have to persuade politicians and policymakers to reform the termination of Pregnancy Act. Despite it having widespread public support to do this, they use the power of storytelling. They spoke to women who had experienced unsafe abortions and trained them as community champions. These champions tell their stories to religious leaders, community leaders and elected assembly members in Zimbabwe's parliament. Many of these leaders have seen the statistics but they only see numbers. They don't understand the human cost of the suffering until a real person looks them in the eye and tells them what they've been through. Ruth took an assembly member to a presentation by a community champion in a rural area. She heard firsthand about the impact that unsafe abortions were having in the community. At the end, she stood up and said, I'm a Christian and pro-life. But now I'm thinking differently as I didn't know that these are the challenges that women are going through. I've been deeply moved by what I've heard when one assembly member starts raising the issue of abortion rights, it has a ripple effect across all policy maker and the Zimbabwean public as a whole. After five years of this work roots has taken an issue that no one wanted to even acknowledge and ensure that women most affected by an outdated law are being heard at the highest levels of government about the need for change.