All across the Caribbean Community social commentators, human rights advocates, religious leaders, Ministers of Health and Attorneys General often become involved in fierce, emotional debates on the death penalty for murder.

But there remains painful reluctance, if not silence, to openly face up to the chronic social problem of unsafe and illegal abortions that are destroying the lives of many women -- every year -- most of them poor, working class citizens of the region.

As viewed by reform-minded advocates, it is the sad story in a number of CARICOM countries -- outdated, unimaginative, undesirable anti-abortion criminal law that cannot protect women from unsafe and illegal abortions.

A mixture of religious hostility and social prejudices often combine to stifle informed, objective national debates on this very sensitive issue that has much to do with responsible parenthood.

Many of our Health Ministers, indeed CARICOM governments as a whole, are driven by fear of losing electoral support and fail to aggressively pursue relevant changes in the law on abortion.

Even when confronted with data showing thousands being hospitalised annually in the region as a direct consequence of unsafe and illegal abortions, plus the high cost to governments to provide medical attention for such patients. .

At this period of a new year when a growing cadre of activists of non-governmental organisations are helping to combat the HIV/AIDS pandemic, there are others, including dedicated Caribbean public health advocates, who brave insults and misrepresentations to fervently lobby for changes in the criminal law on abortion to enable women access to safe and legal abortions.

Such advocates have to avoid becoming trapped in the emotional "pro-life and pro-choice" debates. Rather, they are articulating with specific case studies, the serious harm being done every week, every month to the women of our Caribbean forced to engage in so -- called "back-street" abortions.

In the absence, that is, of established, state-approved medical centres to deal with their pregnancies and within the context of what's legal and safe.

I must here state my own opposition to abortion but without prejudice to my respect for the rights of women who need and are entitled to safe and legal medical treatment if they have no alternative to terminate their pregnancies.

The abortion debate, after all, also has to do with fundamental human rights, one that involves the rights of women exploited and degraded by men, husband or boyfriend, who often pressurise, humiliate and physically assault them into killing their babies by resorting to unsafe and illegal abortions.

In our Caribbean Community family very few countries -- Barbados in 1983, and Guyana in 1995, readily come to mind -- have legalised or decriminalised abortion.

Others, such as Jamaica, felt compelled to establish public health centres to cater to the need for safe abortion within the framework of existing laws.

Only within recent times, however, have Jamaica and some other CARICOM states signalled a more enlightened approach to promote reforms in their public health system that could address challenging problems like HIV/AIDS and unsafe and illegal abortion

Helping in influencing a more positive attitude and breaking the official silence on unsafe and illegal abortion are small groups of professionally equipped individuals with a shared sense of social justice and motivated by a passion to promote an end to what exists as a shattering public health problem in member states of CARICOM.

Their crusading zeal is showing results in the changes, slow as they may be, in societies like Barbados, Guyana, Belize and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Where enlightened and committed Health Ministers exist to help the process, results have been even more encouraging.

There is such a group in Trinidad and Tobago, one that bravely and imaginatively adopted its name, in part, from the national motto: "Together we Aspire, Together we Achieve".

ASPIRE (Advocates for Safe Parenthood: Improving Reproductive Equity", is the NGO group that places much emphasis on research and education and, aided by its website, is urging the people of Trinidad and Tobago and their Caribbean cousins to join them in helping "to make medical abortion legal, safe and accessible for all women who need it".

On November 25 last year, ASPIRE submitted to some government ministers, among them Health Minister Colm Imbert and Attorney General Glenda Morean, a document entitled "Toward Responsible Parenthood: (A Plea for a Review of the Legal Status of Abortion)."

Basically, the ASPIRE document is a mixture of pleas and analyses for Trinidad and Tobago to also be seen as moving into a modern era on its criminal law on abortion..

The specific request to the Manning Government, as I understand it, is that it provides, first of all, a clarification of the state of the country's existing law on abortion.

Secondly, to establish a formal inquiry into the impact of the current law on women's health; and, thirdly, to initiate "an open, public dialogue on the merits and concerns of decriminalising abortion and developing a positive, civil regulatory law".

Intelligently enough, there is no fighting language, no display of arrogance in the document. ASPIRE's plea is simply for dialogue and informed public debate. It would be instructive to learn of the Government's response.