Malian Women Pushed To Infanticide By Poverty

Desperate times call for desperate measures — The women in Mali are a sad example of that adage. Because of the extreme poverty, women who are pregnant often find themselves having no other solution than to kill their babies, making infanticide or attempted infanticide the most common crime after theft and assault among inmates at the prison for women and girls in Bamako.

Abortion is illegal in Mali and only 8 percent of Malian women use contraception, according to UNICEF. Women who find they’re pregnant and don’t have the financial stability to raise them end up leaving their newborns in vacant lots, gutters or toilet pits; if caught, they generally serve a year or two. Infanticide is most common among young women who have come to the capital from villages to find work as domestic workers for sometimes as little as $10 a month. They’re vulnerable, according to Jacqueline Dembele, who runs Muso Danbe, an organization that supports these new city transplants.

“Often the men around them — the man of the house, the sons or other young men — take advantage of them. They get pregnant and then they will do anything they can to get rid of the baby,” she said. ”By the time they give birth they are totally traumatized, almost crazy.”

Pregnancy and motherhood means giving up work for a long period of time, which is not an option for them. But many don’t find the support they need. Earlier this month, officials said 25 of the 122 female prisoners in Bamako were being held for killing or attempting to kill their children.

In the prison, women learn skills such as sewing, soap-making and gardening but the act of killing your child leaves deep scars.

“It’s tough for a woman who has thrown her baby into a gutter or a toilet to talk about it, but we have to try to help them,” said the prison director, Hadiata Maiga.

But even more could be done if women knew of safe places where their children could be raised. The saddest part is that these women are trying to build a new life for themselves, which is hard enough in itself, but find themselves in an even tougher situation than they began with. Let’s work on preventing the problem; it’s got to be easier than picking the pieces back together.

Contact the author here: sedera@morningquickie.com