If you’re reading this, and you text the group chat asking where to get a safe abortion, chances are that someone will know. You’ll get recommendations about specific clinics or doctors who offer the service, as long as you can pay for it. Perhaps these recommendations will come from your friends’ personal experiences, because they too have had an abortion, and they’re sharing where they got the best care.

For women and girls of a certain social class, abortion is not the earth-shattering, life altering event we’ve been led to believe. It is often nothing more complicated than a routine hospital visit. They’ll either give you some pills to swallow at home, resulting in a heavier period than usual and cramping, and though uncomfortable, it will all be over in a few hours. 

Or they will go the surgical route, where they remove the pregnancy through the cervix using gentle suction. It takes about 10 minutes and you’ll be out of the clinic and at home, with nothing more dramatic than a light period for a few days. The point is, as long as you can pay for it, you will always be able to terminate a pregnancy safely, with few to no questions asked. 

The ease with which abortion information and services are available for a certain demographic of women and girls in Kenya may lead one to assume that access is now universal. But Kenya’s health system is heavily classed and unequal, and it tends to crush poor women and girls under its feet.

We were brutally reminded of this fact a few days ago when the Court of Appeal in Malindi ruled to reinstate criminal proceedings against a teenager who procured post-abortion care services in 2019, charged alongside the health worker who attended to her. 

The case is based on the experience of PAK, then 16 years old, who went to a clinic in Malindi after suffering pregnancy complications. She was experiencing vaginal bleeding, abdominal pain and dizziness. The health worker, Mohamed, established that PAK had lost the pregnancy and provided emergency post-abortion services. Mohamed and PAK were subsequently arrested by the police and charged under Kenya’s punitive anti-abortion penal code.

The case has since made its way slowly through the courts, becoming the stage upon which the reproductive freedoms of Kenya’s women and girls are debated and decided. In 2022, in a watershed moment, the High Court ruled that abortion care is allowable under the Constitution and declared the arrest and prosecution of PAK and Mohamed unlawful. This ruling was later challenged by the prosecution in the Court of Appeal, resulting in last week’s draconian judgment. The Centre for Reproductive Rights has indicated that it will move to the Supreme Court to challenge the Court of Appeal’s ruling.

The Constitution of Kenya 2010 leaves the legality of abortion open to interpretation, stating under article 26(4): “Abortion is not permitted unless, in the opinion of a trained health professional, there is need for emergency treatment, or the life or health of the mother is in danger, or if permitted by any other written law.”

This means that on paper, abortion is restricted for everyone, but in practice, abortion in Kenya is only restricted for the poor. Abortion is perfectly allowable if you have money, and nobody will ever seriously query your reasons for wanting one, much less ask that you provide a doctor’s note attesting to the fact that the pregnancy is a threat to your mental or physical health. You can buy bodily autonomy if you have the means and know where to shop.

In 2024, while researching an article about the reality of procuring abortions in Kenya, I spoke to a young woman who had gotten one at Marie Stopes. It cost her KSh 26,000. This is not a price that most women can afford, given that average earnings for women in Kenya are around KSh 12,000 a month. 

What has happened with cases such as PAK’s, compounded with the government’s reluctance to provide and implement abortion care guidelines, is that proper care remains the preserve of the privileged few. We have accepted a sort of healthcare apartheid where a small number of Kenyans can walk into a clinic and pay for a safe abortion while the majority run the risk of dying or getting arrested for seeking the same care.

Women and girls will continue to have abortions, whether they are illegal or not. 

A 2025 joint report by the Ministry of Health, the African Population and Health Research Centre, and the Guttmacher Institute shows that an estimated 792,694 induced abortions occurred in Kenya in 2023. Criminalising abortions doesn’t result in fewer abortions, but more unsafe ones which end in deaths or maiming. Unsafe abortions are still one of the leading causes of maternal mortality in Kenya, claiming seven lives everyday. 

No amount of denial, pontification and prosecution will make abortions go away. Abortions are happening, they should happen, and nobody should go to prison for it. They say nothing about an individual’s morality, and a lot about how serious a country is about protecting the health of its citizens.

A country that truly cares for its citizen’s wellbeing would fund sexual and reproductive health interventions so that everyone can access services more affordably. It would hold healthcare providers accountable to ensure that no one is denied care. This would make backstreet clinics and quacks obsolete. 

A country that really cared about the sanctity of life would provide comprehensive sexuality education so that children and young adults are able to learn about their bodies and how to advocate for themselves, hence reducing incidents of sexual assault and teenage pregnancies. It would make access to contraceptives easy and affordable. 

Other countries have done it, with astounding results. Studies show that abortion rates are lowest in countries where abortion and contraception are accessible.

We can either continue burying our heads in the sand as a country and keep arresting people for abortions, or we can stop performing mental and logical gymnastics and enact policies that ease the burden of healthcare for Kenyans.

PAK deserves to live the rest of her life without the threat of a prison sentence hanging over her head, and the next girl who needs an abortion in Kenya deserves to get one in dignity and safety, without cost and other prohibitions.