September 28th is recognised as international safe abortion day, it is a day to promote access to legal and safe abortion. This year’s theme is “uncertain times call for diverse, collective actions on many fronts”. This year’s theme calls on those who support women’s rights and gender justice to speak and demand for accountability.
Access to safe abortions is one of the factors identified as critical to achieving SDG 3.1, the reduction of maternal mortality rates. According to a United Nations report in 2013, unsafe abortions are a “leading cause of maternal deaths”. The report further warned that “it is likely that the numbers of unsafe abortion will continue to increase unless women’s access to safe abortion and contraception – and support to empower women (including their freedom to decide whether and when to have a child) – are put in place and further strengthened.”
One out of every seven global maternal deaths occurs in Nigeria. Nigeria’s maternal death ratio was estimated at 512 deaths per 100,000 births each year. The NDHS report also stated that for every 1,000 live births, 5 women die during pregnancy, after childbirth and 2 months after childbirth.
SDG goal 3.1, to reduce maternal mortality ratios to less than 70 per 100,000 live births by 2030, currently seems hard-to-reach for Nigeria and unsafe abortions, among other things, is a factor impeding Nigeria’s progress.
Abortion is illegal in Nigeria, permitted only when it is medically recommended to save a woman’s life. Abortion is a felony, and though governed by two separate laws in Nigeria, one for Northern Nigeria contained in the penal code and the other from Southern Nigeria contained in the criminal code, the punishments are similar. Up to a fourteen year jail term for a doctor who performs abortion and 7 years for the woman on which it is performed.
Unfortunately this has not stopped illegal abortions in Nigeria. Most of these are unsafe because they are done in secret, by unskilled providers or both
The estimated abortion rate in Nigeria is 33 per 1,000 women between ages 15-49, 1.25 million induced abortions occurred in 2012 with one in seven pregnancies ending in abortions.
According to the data from 2012, the South-South region had the highest rate of abortions in Nigeria, while North-East has the second highest rate of abortion. Southwest and North-central have the lowest rate of abortion in Nigeria.
Guttmacher data reveals that 285,000 women have complications from unsafe induced abortions and only 212,000 women in 2021 went to a health facility for treatment of complications from induced abortions.
The main reason for abortions in the country is the desire for smaller families and the non-use of contraceptives. Religious beliefs and cultural beliefs have greatly influenced access to abortion in some regions including Nigeria.
There have been several conversations about legalizing abortion in Nigeria, with proponents emphasizing the loss of life to unsafe abortions as a fundamental reason for legalizing it. These agitations have however not gained mainstream acceptance.