Abortion Is Illegal in Nigeria but 1.25 Million Abortions Occurred There in 2012

In Nigeria, abortion is subject to draconian regulations, allowed only in cases of threat to the mother's life. According to a new study, this hasn't prevented abortion from occurring: In 2012, 1.25 million women terminated pregnancies in the country, up from 610,000 in 1996.

Last week, the Guttmacher Institute and the University of Ibadan detailed these findings in a study called "The Incidence of Abortion in Nigeria." Their findings are at once unsurprising and startling: It's well documented that restricting abortion access does not prevent abortion from occurring. However, harsh abortion laws do have a measurable impact on maternal health—of the 1.25 million abortions that take place annually in Nigeria, according to the study, 40 percent result in complications serious enough to require treatment. Dr. Akinrinola Bankole, one of the study's authors, told Broadly that only 43 percent of those who suffered serious complications from unsafe abortion were able to access treatment.

"There really is no relationship between abortion law and the number of abortions that happen. There are countries where abortion is legal on demand, and yet abortion rates are low; there are countries where abortion is highly restricted, and abortion rates are high," said Dr. Bankole in a phone interview. "When the law is highly restrictive, it does not necessarily stop abortion, but it makes it less safe and puts the lives of women in great danger."

According to Reviews in Obstetrics & Gynecology, methods of unsafe abortion include "drinking toxic fluids such as turpentine, bleach, or drinkable concoctions mixed with livestock manure" and "inflicting direct injury to the vagina or elsewhere—for example, inserting herbal preparations into the vagina or cervix; placing a foreign body such as a twig, coat hanger, or chicken bone into the uterus; or placing inappropriate medication into the vagina or rectum." The most common causes of death from unsafe abortion are "hemorrhage, infection, sepsis, genital trauma," and death of bowel tissue. Around the world, a woman dies every eight minutes of unsafe abortion.

Even adjusted for population growth, the new Guttmacher figures show a slight increase in the abortion rate: In 1996, it was 23 in 1,000 births; now, it's 33 in 1,000 births. This could be the result of a new calculation method, but it's notable in its own right that the rate hasn't declined. The Nigerian government has committed to achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals—including Goal 5, to improve maternal health by reducing the maternal mortality ratio by 75 percent and by providing universal access to reproductive healthcare by 2015.

However, Nigeria still has a low rate of contraception use—according to a 2012 Population Matters study, only about 10 percent of Nigerian women use modern contraceptive methods—not to mention one of the world's highest maternal morality rates. Roughly a quarter of the pregnancies that occurred in the country in 2012 were unintended, according to the Guttmacher study; of those unintended pregnancies, more than half—56 percent—ended in abortion. According to Dr. Bankole, the government must implement and enforce effective reproductive health policies to change that reality.

"The root cause of unsafe abortion is unintended pregnancy. If you are able to reduce unintended pregnancy, you are most likely to reduce unsafe abortion," he said. "The government needs to buckle up [and] increase funding as well as strategies that would really be effective in providing access to contraception."