GHANA: Safe abortion services virtually non-existent despite 1985 law

ACCRA, 12 October 2007 (IRIN) - Ghana has one of Africa’s most liberal abortion laws but because of lingering stigma, fear and misunderstanding, safe, affordable abortion services remain virtually non-existent and unsafe abortion is a major cause of death, observers say.

While some activists are pushing for lifting restrictions altogether, health experts say the focus should be on ensuring the health sector effectively provides what the current law allows.

Under a law passed in 1985, abortion is allowed in cases of rape or incest, defilement of the mentally handicapped, foetal impairment and to save the life or physical or mental health of the woman. But stigma attached to abortion and ignorance about the law are such that even women who are within their legal rights are afraid to seek an abortion, and many health facilities do not offer such services, experts say.

“Because of the fear of falling foul of the law, health facilities will not dare to offer abortion services,” Faustina Finn Nyame of the Ghana office of Marie Stopes International said. “Because of this, women who seek abortion cannot get access to quality abortion care. They either do it themselves through crude means or go to traditional medicine men for the service.”

Nana Ama Asantoa, 19, used a common method when she recently drank a concoction including powdered soap and broken glass and inserted a stick into her uterus to end her three-month pregnancy.

Asantao survived after an emergency operation, but many women do not. Maternal mortality in Ghana stands at about 540 per 100,000, and it is estimated that 22 to 30 percent of those deaths are from unsafe abortion, health experts say.

The World Health Organization (WHO) in a report released this year said as of 2003 nearly 12,000 women in West Africa were dying annually from unsafe abortion. “A woman dies every eighth minute somewhere in a developing country due to complications arising from unsafe abortion,” WHO says.

The Ghana Health Service is working to expand abortion services in public hospitals, Gloria Quansah Asare, national family planning manager, told IRIN. Safe abortion services exist in some private facilities but the cost puts the procedure out of reach for many.

Accessible or not, many women fear coming forward to seek abortions, even if it is within their legal rights.

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