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KENYA, July 18, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Kenya’s high court is set to decide whether the government is legally responsible for a teenage girl’s death in a back-alley abortion, in a lawsuit spearheaded by the U.S.-based Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR).

In 2014, the girl publicly known only as JMM was raped and impregnated at age 15, Reuters reports. She had an illegal abortion, which gave her an infection and eventual kidney failure that took her life this past June, after being transferred between four hospitals that didn’t know how to treat her.

In 2015, her mother filed a petition with the Federation of Women Lawyers blaming the government for not giving her daughter post-abortion care and demanding new policies providing access to “safe” abortions.

While the country’s 2010 constitution allowed abortion in cases of medical risk or emergency to the woman, its health ministry has also withdrawn abortion “safety” guidelines and prohibited abortion training, which pro-abortion activists claim gave JMM no safer options.

“While JMM was entitled to quality post abortion care irrespective of whether it was within the law or otherwise, she did not receive it from the point of first contact with the health system,” said Evelyne Opondo, CRR’s Africa director. “Instead there were several delays and missed opportunities to mitigate the adverse effect of the unsafe abortion on her health and life.”

CRR, which intervenes all over the world to legalize abortion on “human rights” grounds, is representing the petitioners in the case, and is specifically demanding compensation from the government for the girl’s family, restoration of the abortion “safety” guidelines, and repeal of the training ban.

However, Catholic News Agency (CNA) reports that according to Dr. Joel Gondi, head of the Reproductive and Maternal Health Service Unit, the reason the guidelines were removed in the first place was because “they were being used for unintended purposes.”

Additionally, Dr. Wahome Ngari testified that pro-abortion advocates have dramatically exaggerated the number of back-alley abortions “to push the Government to repeal their abortion law.” There were 140,000 in 2002 rather than 400,000, according to Ngari, but activists inflate the figure by including the number of women who miscarried rather than aborted.

The doctor also proposed that legitimizing more abortions is not the solution for reducing maternal deaths.

“The reason pregnant mothers die in the country is haemorrhage, followed by infections, hyperactive disorders, prolonged or obstructed labour and lastly abortion,” Ngari testified. “Anyone who wants to offer a solution should follow that order.”

On Tuesday, Culture of Life Africa founder and president Obianuju Ekeocha called out CRR’s involvement on Twitter. “Yes, a well-funded American organization through its Kenyan branch is carrying out judicial activism against an African country over abortion,” she lamented.

Ekeocha has previously argued that Western efforts to force African nations to accept abortion and contraception are a form of “ideological neocolonialism” contrary to the will of the countries’ own people.

About 80 percent of African countries reject legal abortion as “incompatible with our culture which teaches us that every human being carries bloodlines of clans and families that are never to be forgotten and that our lives begin right from our mothers’ womb,” she wrote in a May open letter to British MPs.

“[We find] organizations like Marie Stopes International, International Planned Parenthood Federation and IPAS…running expensive lobbying campaigns at our parliaments to legalize abortion even against the will of the people,” Ekeocha continued. “And when we investigate, we find out that some of these organizations are performing illegal abortions in African countries where abortion is not legal.”

CRR is active in seventeen African nations, including Chad, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.

The high court case is currently adjourned until September 18, and a verdict is expected by the end of the year.

Pro-life advocates often point out that the phrase “safe abortion” is an oxymoron, as abortion is never safe for the pre-born child who is killed.