Analysis
By Alice Emasu
5 October 2004
Kampala — Society seems to accept domestic violence as a bedroom affair that should not even spill over to the living room, but why should a man batter his pregnant wife?
To many right thinking members of society, nine months of pregnancy is a shared responsibility between husband and wife. It requires provision of protection, extra love, care and enough to eat.
But to many women in West Budhama, Tororo district this is just a dream. Hundreds of expectant mothers quietly experience domestic violence.
According to Mifumi, an anti-domestic violence non-governmental organisation operating Tororo district, at least three pregnant women experience domestic violence every month.
Barely a month before she delivered, Rose Achar, 40, a mother of six, got a kick in her ribs from her husband, which left her gasping for breath. When she regained consciousness, Achar was in Tororo Hospital.Labour pains and delivery time found her in the hospital nursing the injuries.
Crime? She accepted a goat from her niece’s husband.
“I accepted a goat from my niece’s husband for properly bringing up the girl. In our culture, a girl’s aunt receives a goat, while an uncle gets a cow as a gift,” Achar explains. Her husband, Owor Onyango, however, could not hear of this. He regarded it as a debt to be paid in future when their own daughter got married.
Though the couple is trying to reconcile, a cloud of gloom still hangs between them. Onyango, however, seems more bothered about the losses he incurred in police bond, court fines and medical bills than the pain his wife suffered.
“We’ve always fought even when she was pregnant but it has never cost me this much,” he says. For this particular case, he had to sell a cow and piece of land, to cover the expenses.
Though he agrees he overreacted, he blames his wife, “It was wrong for her to accept a goat without my consent,” he argues.
Jane Akoth, 36, and three months pregnant was in tears as she narrated her ordeal to the nurses at Mifumi Medical Centre. Akoth’s husband had battered her for being ‘stubborn’. She refused to cook vegetables. According to her, when she sees vegetables, she throws up – a condition she attributes to pregnancy.
Surprisingly though, after recording a statement with the Police, she pleaded for the release of her husband.
Mary Asili, a health officer with Mifumi says she suspects Akoth changed her mind due to pressure from her in-laws.
Many victims, she says report the cases but later opt for out-of-court settlement. Records at the project indicate that this is mostly due to bride price. “While some men will beat their pregnant wives because they are demanding for what the wives may not easily provide, others expect them not to question whenever they do wrong, because they paid bride price.
Teresa Apoyo, 45, says in four of her pregnancies, her husband used to beat her and remind how he paid bride price to her parents.
Mary Owere of Mifumi Medical Centre says violence against pregnant women is can cause serious problems such as miscarriage or injury to the unborn baby
Grace Lwanga, a domestic violence officer says the problem of wife battering during pregnancy and after delivery rotates around men demanding for sex and money. She says some women say domestic violence during pregnancy and after delivery emanates from sexual relationships.The victims allege that the fight is often sparked off by failure by some men to understand that some women lose interest in sex during pregnancy. She says some mothers are beaten for saving money to take care of their maternal needs.
Mifumi executive director, Atuki Turner says domestic violence against women increases during pregnancy because of power control and dominance by men. Most men, she says, continue to demand that a pregnant woman perform all her duties as tradition demands. Unfortu-nately, during pregnancy, women are unable to do certain things such as carrying heavy loads. The LC1 chairman of Kirewa, M. Gordian Ocheng, says most men who fight their pregnant wives do so out of jealousy. “Such men misinterpret biological changes in expectant mothers like having little or no interest in sex as pretence. They suspect the women are cheating on them,” he says. According to Holtzworth-Munroe, at Indian University, violent men seem to have deficits in processing social information in specific situations. They negatively misinterpret their wives’ behaviour, which induce an inner panic because they hint at rejection.
Implications:
Socially:
-Battering often starts or increases during pregnancy.
-Out of every 1,000 pregnant women, 154 are assaulted by their partners during the first four months of pregnancy. From the 5th month on, 170 out of 1,000 pregnant women are assaulted.
-If a woman is going to kill her abuser, she is more likely to do so if she is battered during her pregnancy.
Medically
-Abuse during pregnancy may result into fetal fractures, ruptured uterus, liver or spleen or abortion.
-It can harm the unborn child; cause lower birth weight, premature delivery, miscarriage, or still births.
-Blunt trauma to a maternal abdomen leads to placental abruption, preterm labour and delivery, fetomaternal haemorrhage, and fetal death.
-As labour progresses, the increasing pain, the subsequent sense of loss of control, and the repeated pelvic and genital examinations by a number of care givers can result in unexpectedly extreme responses such as screaming, or uncontrollable terror.