Ten fingers and ten toes. Perfectly formed, he lies on the table as if he were sleeping …

But he is not sleeping. He is dead, having taken four hours to die after an illegal abortion.

On Monday, a resident from Uganda, the 26-year-old Juko Moses, appeared in the Louis Trichardt Regional Court in connection with the baby’s death. He was charged with the illegal termination of a pregnancy.

According to information available,  Moses was charged after the Makhado police had arrested him in July last year. His arrest followed after a 29-year-old woman, who wanted to terminate her five-month pregnancy, had put the police on Moses’s trail. 

The woman,  who cannot be identified without her informed consent, responded to one of the many illegal abortion advertisements that are plastered all over Makhado (Louis Trichardt). She allegedly paid R1 000 for five Cytotex tablets, used to terminate pregnancies.

After suffering major complications, she was rushed to the Louis Trichardt Memorial Hospital, where doctors quickly realized that they were dealing with an illegal abortion. The police were notified and the woman claimed that she had bought the tablets from Moses.

Police found Moses busy consulting with other “patients”. He was arrested on the spot and several different illegal posters, as well as Cytotex tablets, were seized. The posters advertised the services of Drs Moses, Vickey and Ivan, as well as a fortuneteller named Mama Sali.

Over the past few years, residents have become increasingly frustrated with the escalating number of illegal abortion posters plastered on every available surface in town, advertising “safe, pain-free” and “same-day” abortions.

With no visible law enforcement taking place to curb the problem of these illegal posters, the youth group of the Dutch Reformed Church’s Soutpansberg congregation initiated a cleaning campaign in June this year. The campaign was so successful that a second one was organized, which was supported by the mayor of the Makhado Municipality, Cllr David Mutavhatsindi.

Although the project sparked growing public contempt for these illegal posters, it remained troublesome that the people behind these advertisements were still of little concern to the authorities. It was therefore no wonder that news of Moses’s arrest came as good news for one the church group’s members, Mr Frans van der Merwe. For years, he has been fighting the illegal poster war in town singlehandedly.

“But at what cost did the arrest come?” he asked. Van der Merwe has been removing posters for almost five years and at one stage even managed to catch one of the culprits putting up posters in the vicinity of the police station. The culprit was not charged.

Countrywide, it would seem that backstreet abortionists fall into a grey area. Where communities have questioned the police, it was stated that this is a matter of misleading advertising and that the police could only make an arrest after someone had attempted to perform an abortion.

In South Africa, the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act governs the conditions under which an abortion may be provided. It stipulates that any person who is not a medical practitioner or registered midwife with special training who performs abortions is guilty of an offence. The Act also makes provision for women to access legal abortions on request at state or private facilities, up to 12 weeks into their pregnancy. The newspaper was able to determine that, in a case of an illegal abortion where it can be proven that a child could have survived, the person who performed the abortion could be charged with murder.

In the meantime, Moses, who failed to appear in court, was re-arrested last week. He was expected to plead guilty in terms of a plea bargain with the State. His case had to be postponed, however, when he informed the court that there were still some details of his case that he wished to discuss with his attorney. He will remain in custody until 1 October, when he is expected to finalize his plea.