The Existing Abortion Law - An Overview of The Nigerian Legislation by Chikamso Ononuju - Lawyard

11/6/2018 The Existing Abortion Law: An Overview of the Nigerian Legislation by Chikamso Ononuju — Lawyard
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The Existing Abortion Law: An
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Overview of the Nigerian Legislation
by Chikamso Ononuju
by lawyard sta | Nov 6, 2018 | Articles, News, Opinion | 0 comments
ABSTRACT
This paper examines the controversial subject of abortion, the existing laws relating to the
subject and the current stand of Nigeria on the issue. The abortion law shall be examined in
relation to existing laws in other jurisdictions, particularly in Europe and America, and such
existing laws shall be explained in juxtaposition with the existing Nigerian legislation on the
subject matter. The present position of the Nigerian statutes, particularly the Criminal Code and
the Penal Code are considered, giving recommendations and opinions especially in relation to
the criminalization of abortion in Nigeria, abortion law in relation to the growing population
and the e ect on Fundamental Human Rights. Finally, the possible incorporation and adoption
of the existing law in other jurisdictions in the Nigerian Legal System shall be considered.
1.0
INTRODUC
TION
Abortion
law gives
rise to
either the
permission,
restriction
or
prohibition
of abortion.
The
concept of abortion is very wide, giving rise to controversial topics and opinions on the
subject matter. Abortion has been made illegal in many jurisdictions as over 25% of the
https://www.lawyard.ng/the-existing-abortion-law-an-overview-of-the-nigerian-legislation-by-chikamso-ononuju/ 1/19
world’s population live in countries with highly restrictive abortion laws, mostly in Latin
America, Asia and Africa. However, this does not stop the act from being perpetrated, as
various abortion related cases are recorded daily in these jurisdictions which prohibit
abortion. Countries have faced a huge challenge in keeping track of the abortions which
take place in the state, however, developed countries have been able to keep such records
to a high extent unlike underdeveloped countries. For example, it was recorded in 2011,
that there were 189,931 abortions to women resident in England and Wales, which is a rise
of 0.2% from 2010. The highest recorded number of abortions to women resident in
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England and Wales was in 2007, with a total of 198,499. It is also noteworthy that there
were 189,859 abortions for women resident in England and Wales in 2017 and 194,668
abortions including non-residents. This is an increase of 2.3% since 2016, and a similar
level to 2011. Women in England and Wales consist of less than 10% of women of the
world’s population, giving room for a rough estimation of the number of abortion cases
worldwide. The World Health Organisation (WHO) stated that abortion rates are similar in
countries where the procedure is legal and countries where it is not, due to unavailability
of modern contraceptives in areas where abortion is illegal. Also according to WHO, the
number of abortions worldwide is declining due to increased access to contraception. It
should be noted that the concept of abortion has been widely liberalised. Presently,
almost two-thirds of the world’s women currently reside in countries where abortion may
be obtained on request for social, economic or personal reasons and such countries
include; Austria, France and Belgium amongst others. According to the Center for
Reproductive Rights: The World’s Abortion Laws Map, 2013 Update Fact Sheet; the legal
status of induced abortion ranges from complete prohibition to elective abortion at the
request of the pregnant woman. Approximately 26% of the world’s population live in
countries where abortion was prohibited without exception or where it was permitted only
to save the life of the pregnant woman. These included most of the Islamic states of Asia,
almost two-thirds of the countries of Latin America, a majority of the countries of Africa,
and only one country in Europe, i.e., Ireland. Approximately 14% live under statutes
authorizing abortion on broader medical grounds, such as to avert a threat to the woman’s
physical or mental health rather than to her life, and sometimes on eugenic, or foetal
indication, which is a known genetic or other impairment of the foetus or increased risk of
such impairment, or juridical indication, e.g., rape and incest. Furthermore, 22% reside in
countries where abortion is permitted to protect a woman’s health and where social
factors, such as inadequate income, substandard housing, and unmarried status, could be
taken into consideration in the evaluation of the threat to the woman’s health; or where
adverse social conditions alone, without reference to health, could justify termination of
pregnancy. Important countries in this group include; Great Britain, India, and Japan.
2.0 HISTORY AND AN OVERVIEW OF ABORTION LAWS

Over the years, there have been various laws enacted in various jurisdictions in relation to
the concept of abortion. These laws vary greatly in the circumstances under which
abortion was to be either permitted or prohibited.
Abortion has been legalised in many countries due to human advancement and
development, preventing the unnecessary su ering and death of women. There were no
existing codi ed abortion laws prior to the beginning of the 19th century. The English law
on abortion was rst codi ed in legislation under sections 1 and 2 of Malicious Shooting or
Stabbing Act 1803. The Bill was proposed by the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales,
Edward Law, 1st Baron Ellenborough to clarify the law relating to abortion and was the
rst law to explicitly outlaw it. The Act provided that it was an o ence for any person to
perform or cause an abortion. The punishment for performing or attempting to perform a
post quickening abortion was the death penalty, which was provided for in section 1 of the
Act, and otherwise was transportation for fourteen years, which was provided for in
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section 2. In 19th-century America, there was little regulation of abortion, in the tradition
of English common law, pre quickening abortions were considered at most a
misdemeanor. These cases however proved di cult to prosecute as the testimony of the
mother was usually the only means to determine when quickening had occurred. The law
was amended in 1828 and 1837, and the latter removed the distinction between women
who were quick with child, i.e., late pregnancy, and those who were not. It also eliminated
the death penalty as a possible punishment. The latter half of the 19th century saw
abortion become increasingly punished.
Furthermore, in the United States, the O ences against the Persons Act 1861 created a
new preparatory o ence of procuring poison or instruments with intent to procure
abortion. During the 1860s however abortion services were available in various states in
the United States such as, New York, New Orleans, Cincinnati, Louisville, Cleveland,
Chicago and Indianapolis; with estimates of one abortion for every 4 live births.
In 1869, Pope Pius IX declared that human life begins at conception. He marked his
contribution to the abortion debate by removing the distinction between an animated and
unanimated foetus from Catholic doctrine, and established the edict that a human should
be protected starting from the moment of conception onward. He further made conscious
e orts in punishing those that procured abortions at any time of gestation. This practice
prevailed within the Catholic Church and excommunication for abortion became Canon
Law in 1917, and later revised in 1983. His declaration laid a foundation for the laws
enacted in many jurisdictions which state that human life begins at conception.
The 1983 Eight Amendment of the Constitution of the Republic of Ireland grants full right
to life and personhood, to any “unborn” and prohibited abortion at any point in time
during pregnancy. Also, the US Supreme Court a rmed the common law principle that a
child in its mother’s womb can be regarded as “in being” for the purpose of resolving a
dispute about wills and trusts in its 1885 decision in the case of McArthur v. Scott,
implying that an unborn child is considered to have attained full human status. In 2002,
the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of the United States was enacted, which ensures
that the legal concepts of a “person, baby, infant, and child” include those which have been
born alive in the course of a miscarriage or abortion, regardless of development,
gestational age, or whether the placenta and umbilical cord are still attached. Also, section
1(1) and (2) of the English Infant Life (preservation) Act limits the legality of abortion to
those circumstances where the foetus or unborn child is not capable of being born alive.
There are other several of such existing laws showing that an unborn child possesses
certain rights and also restricting abortion; the Child’s Right Act of Nigeria is inclusive.
Section 17(1) of the Child’s Right Act of Nigeria (2003) provides that “a child may bring an
action for damages against a person for harm or injury caused to the child wilfully,
recklessly, negligently or through neglect before, during or after the birth of that child. In
addition, The American Convention on Human Rights, declares human life as
commencing with conception and Article 4(1) establishes that life shall be protected in
general, from the moment of conception.
However, there was a ground breaking decision in 1938, which governed British thinking
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about abortion for nearly thirty years. In 1938, the important case of R v Bourne was
decided in favour of an abortion performed on a 14 year old girl who had been raped. The
court felt that the girl’s mental health would have su ered if she had given birth and this
established that the mother’s mental su ering could be su cient reason for an abortion.
The judge, Mr. Justice Macnaghten, stated that if the doctor is of the opinion, on
reasonable grounds and with adequate knowledge, that the probable consequence of the
continuance of the pregnancy will be to make the woman a physical or mental wreck, the
jury are entitled to take the view that the doctor is operating for the purpose of preserving
the life of the mother.
More recently, in 2005, the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) a rmed
abortion as a human right, stating that denial of abortion services in cases of fatal foetal
impairments could amount to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, after holding
Peru accountable for not providing access to safe and legal abortion in the case of Karen
Noelia Llantoy Huaman v. Peru (K.L. v Peru). It was further recognised by the Human
Rights Commission that compelling an individual to carry to term an anencephalic
pregnancy can amount to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment and violates the right
to privacy. The UNHRC further ordered Peru to compensate K.L, because medical
providers denied her, a 17-year-old girl an abortion even though her physicians had
determined that the fetus was anencephalic and would not survive past childbirth. The
Human Rights Committee further found that Peru’s abortion law entitled K.L. to a legal
abortion and therefore concluded that Peru had violated international and Peruvian law by
not providing a procedural mechanism to e ectuate the right.
Furthermore, it was stated in Paton v. British Pregnancy Advisory Service Trustees, that
the foetus cannot, in English law have a right of its own at least until it is born and has
separate existence from its mother. The decision of the court in Paton v. British Advisory
Service Trustees was brought before the European Commission on Human Rights. The
Commission considered the decision vis-a-vis the provision of Article 2 of the European
Commission of Human Rights which states that “Everyone’s right to life shall be protected by
law”. At the end of their considerations, the commission concluded that the term
“Everyone” applied only to post-natal and that a pre-natal construction of the same will fail.
Also, in Winnipeg Child and Family Services v. G, the Supreme Court of Canada held that
the law does not recognize the unborn child as a legal or judicial person possessing any
rights but has always treated the mother and the unborn child as one legal entity.
There has however been a long controversy as to the restrictive nature of abortion laws. It
has been argued by the UNHRC that restrictive abortion laws do not only violate women’s
fundamental right to privacy but also violate human rights based on agreements made at
the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo,
(which its resulting Programme of Action is the steering document for the United Nations
Population Fund), the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing and stated in the
United Nation’s Report of the Fourth World Conference on Women and the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights in articles 1, 3, 12, 19 and 27. It was agreed in the UN’s Report
of the Fourth World Conference on Women that abortion should be safe and in all cases,
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women should have access to quality services for the management of complications
arising from abortion. It is also noteworthy that restrictive abortion policies are associated
with higher rates of unsafe abortions. According to a 2014 UN report, “The average unsafe
abortion rate was more than four times greater in countries with restrictive abortion
policies in 2011 (26.7 unsafe abortions per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 years) than in
countries with liberal abortion policies (6.1 unsafe abortions per 1,000 women aged 15 to
44 years)”. The WHO has found that removing restrictions reduces maternal mortality from
unsafe abortion.
It is also important to note that countries allowing abortion on request without specifying
reasons, sometimes limited to the rst trimester of pregnancy accounted for 39% of the
world’s population. Abortions on medical grounds are usually permitted beyond the
gestational limit prescribed for elective abortions, and parental consent may be required if
the pregnant woman is a minor. The countries in this category include; Austria, Canada,
China, Cuba, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, South
Africa, Spain, the republics of the former Soviet Union, Sweden, Tunisia, Turkey, the United
States, Uruguay, Vietnam, and most of the formerly socialist republics of Eastern and
Central Europe. In the United Kingdom, the Abortion Act of 1967, clari ed and prescribed
abortion as legal up to 24 weeks. The condition under which abortion is permitted varies
widely in di erent jurisdictions. According to the United Nations publication World
Abortion Policies 2011, abortion is allowed in 97% of countries to save the woman’s life,
67% of countries to preserve physical health, 63% of countries to preserve mental health,
49% of countries in cases of rape and incest, 34% of countries for economic or social
reasons, and 24% of counties on the basis of the woman’s request.
Notwithstanding the wide restrictions under which abortion is permitted, some countries
in Europe place a total ban on abortion. Such countries include Vatican City, Malta, San
Marino, Liechtenstein, Andorra, Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Various
decisions have however noted such ban to be a violation of the fundamental human rights
of women. Notably, in the case of Mellet v. Ireland, the UNHRC found that Ireland’s
abortion ban violated articles 7, 17 and 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights by banning abortion in cases of fatal foetal abnormality and forcing the
claimant to travel to the United Kingdom for an abortion. It was further held that denying
women their freedom in an area a ecting their reproductive function runs counter to the
right not to be discriminated against on the basis of sex, because it denies women their
freedom of choice. Abortion ban was further frowned upon in the aforementioned case on
the basis that criminalisation of abortion stereotyped women as a reproductive instrument
and thus subjected them to discrimination. Also, by prioritizing protection of the unborn
over a woman’s health and personal autonomy, women are subjected to a gender-based
stereotype that women should continue their pregnancies regardless of circumstances,
because their primary role is to be mothers and caregivers, thus infringing on her right to
gender equality.
A 2018 global report on abortion found that 25 million unsafe abortions are performed
every year and 97% of them are in developing countries, causing many women and girls to
die of complications. It found that between 8 to 11% of maternal deaths around the world
relate to abortion, resulting in 22,800 – 31,000 preventable deaths each year. Furthermore,
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nearly all deaths and morbidity from unsafe abortion occur in countries where abortion is
severely restricted. Lack of legal access to abortion often leads women to seek abortion
services from unskilled providers or under unhygienic conditions, exposing them to a
signi cant risk of death or injury.
There are also laws in countries with liberal abortion laws that protect access to abortion
services. Such laws seek to protect abortion clinics obstruction, vandalism, and such other
actions, or to protect the employees of such facilities and the patients from threat and
harassment.
3.0 ABORTION LAW IN NIGERIA

In Nigeria, there are two major existing abortion laws, the law of the Northern states and
the law of the Southern states. The Northern states, make use of the Penal Code (Northern
Region No. 18 of 1959), while the Southern states, make use of the Criminal Code Act
[Nigeria], Cap C38 LFN 2004. The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is
basically pro-life, therefore, there are certain provisions in the Constitution to the e ect
that every person has a right to life and nobody should be intentionally deprived of his life
except in the execution of the sentence of a court where a person is found guilty of
committing an o ence. This accounts for why abortion is generally regarded as illegal in
Nigeria.
Nigeria’s abortion law makes it one of the most restrictive countries regarding abortion.
Abortion in Nigeria is recognized only on the basis that the mother’s life would be severely
endangered, and this exception is recognized only under the penal code as the criminal
code out rightly criminalises abortion. Under the Criminal Code, abortion is illegal and
carries a heavy jail sentence of fourteen years imprisonment.
In the Southern states, the Criminal Code is enforced. Sections 228, 229 and 230 of the
Criminal Code provide for the abortion laws. Section 228 of the Criminal Code states that;
Any person who, with the intent to procure miscarriage of a woman whether she is or is not with
a child, unlawfully administers to her or causes her to take any poison or other noxious thing, or
uses any force of any kind, or uses any other means whatever, is guilty of a felony, and is liable
to imprisonment for fourteen years.
Section 229 of Criminal Code provides that;
Any woman who, with the intent to procure her own miscarriage, whether she is or is not with
child, unlawfully administers to herself any poison or other noxious thing, or uses any force of
any kind, or uses any means whatever, or permits any such thing or means to be administered
or used to her, is guilty of a felony, and is liable to imprisonment for seven years.
Section 230 of the Criminal Code provides that;
Any person who unlawfully supplies to or procures for any person anything whatever, knowing
that it is intended to be unlawfully used to procure the miscarriage of a woman, whether she is
or is not with child, is guilty of a felony, and is liable to imprisonment of three years.
The above statutory provisions support the previously stated fact that Nigeria’s abortion
law is very restrictive. However, this does not stop the act from being nevertheless
perpetrated in Nigeria and this has led to a number of unsafe abortions. This further
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buttresses the point that an estimated 97% of unsafe abortions occur in developing
countries, such as Nigeria, where, on average, each woman will experience one unsafe
abortion during her child-bearing years.
Sections 232, 233, and 234 of the Penal Code provide for the abortion laws. Section 232 of
the Penal Code provides;
Whoever causes a woman with child to miscarry shall, if the miscarriage be not caused in
good faith for the purpose of saving the life of the woman, be punished with a term of
imprisonment which may extend to fourteen years or with ne or both.
The Penal Code provides clearly, as seen is Section 232 above that abortion is permitted
only where the mother’s life is to be preserved. This is deemed to be a more reasonable
provision than the criminal code, as it was drafted to suit the socio-cultural and religious
lifestyle of the northerners. Based on the decision in the case of R v. Edgal, which followed
the English case of R v. Bourne, it is now established that abortion undertaken to preserve
the life of the mother would not amount to culpable transgression of the Criminal Code.
Apart from preserving the mother’s life, any other reason for abortion in Nigeria is a crime.
It is appalling that in some cases, Nigerian courts still make use of the archaic provisions
on abortion which have been long repealed by English law, which Nigeria essentially lifted
verbatim. It can be deduced from Section 228 of the Criminal Code that medically
conducting abortion by doctors and post-abortion care for such women are felonies under
the section. The Penal Code however tried to adjust the abortion laws to suit the socio-
cultural and religious background of the northern people.
The major cause for abortion in Nigeria is unwanted pregnancy and according to the
World Health Organisation (WHO), over 40% of pregnancies worldwide are unplanned due
to non-use of contraception, ine ective contraceptive use or method failure. In Nigeria,
due to the fact that abortion is illegal, a lot of women resort to unsafe abortion
procedures. The importance of safe abortions cannot be over-emphasised and in 2013 the
Committee on the Rights of the Child General comment No. 15 (2013) on the right of
the child to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health, provided in
article 24 that “The Committee recommends that States ensure access to safe abortion and
post-abortion care services, irrespective of whether abortion itself is legal”. Also, General
comment No. 22 (2016) on the right to sexual and reproductive health, provided for in
article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR)
states that, “Essential medicines should also be available, including a wide range of
contraceptive methods, such as condoms and emergency contraception, medicines for
abortion and for post-abortion care, and medicines, including generic medicines, for the
prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted infections and HIV”.
A restrictive law that only allows termination of pregnancy to save the life of the woman
contributes to the high rate of unsafe abortion in Nigeria, in other words, abortion policies,
therefore; adversely a ect the lives and health of women in Nigeria. Of the total number of
pregnancies that occur each year in Nigeria, 63% end in planned births, 10% in mistimed
or unwanted births, 11% in induced abortion and 16% in miscarriage. Roughly one in ve
pregnancies each year in Nigeria are unplanned; of those, slightly more than half end in
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abortion. The broad reasons for unsafe abortion procedures include; social, cultural,
economic and religious reasons. A major disadvantage of Nigeria’s restrictive abortion law
is that those who cannot embrace unsafe abortion are forced to carry unwanted
pregnancies, notwithstanding the negative e ects that it might have on them. In the long
run, women with unwanted pregnancies may su er various hardships such as, break in
education, nancial breakdown, psychological trauma and in some cases, such women
may abandon their babies. It is obvious that in such instances, a safe abortion would be a
better option than subjecting women and babies to such hardships.
4.0 THE CONNECTION BETWEEN EXISTING ABORTION LAWS AND HUMAN RIGHTS
All states have an obligation to respect, protect, and ful ll human rights. Therefore, where
there is an unreasonable restriction to safe and legal abortion, a number of human rights
may be at risk. Some of these rights include; Right to life, Right to health and health care,
Right to dignity of the human person, Right to information, Right to non-discrimination and
equality, Right to be free from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, Right to privacy,
Right to decide the number and spacing of children, Right to Security of a person, Right to
liberty, Right to enjoy the bene ts of scienti c progress, and Right to freedom of
conscience and religion. Also, human rights bodies have provided clear guidance on when
there is a need to decriminalize abortion, and have emphasized that access to abortion is a
matter of human rights. Ensuring access to these services in accordance with human rights
standards is part of State obligations to eliminate discrimination against women and to
ensure women’s right to health as well as other fundamental human rights.
International human rights bodies have characterized laws generally criminalizing abortion
as discriminatory and a barrier to women’s access to health care. They have recommended
that States remove all punishments for women who have done an abortion. These bodies
have also requested that States permit abortion in certain cases, such as protecting the life
of the mother. Denying women access to abortion where there is a threat to the woman’s
life or health, or where the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest violates the rights to
health, privacy and, in certain cases, to be free from cruel, inhumane and degrading
treatment.
The strict abortion law can be said to be a violation of the right to dignity of the human
person, contained in Section 34 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,
and Article 5 of the African Charter of Human and People’s Right. The abortion law,
which leads women to unsafe abortion exposes women to su ering and indignity,
therefore serves as a violation of their fundamental human rights.
In protecting the right to dignity and protection from inhuman and degrading treatment,
The Special Rapporteur on torture has called on States to ensure that women have access
to emergency medical care, including post-abortion care, without fear of criminal penalties
or reprisals. Signi cantly, the Committee against Torture, in its Concluding Observations,
has called on states to eliminate the practice of extracting confessions for prosecution
purposes from women seeking emergency medical care as result of illegal abortion.
Furthermore, the restrictive abortion law of Nigeria can be seen as an infringement of the
right to privacy which is provided for in Section 37 of the 1999 Constitution. Also, Article
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17 of the ICCPR protects privacy and it provides that:
No one shall be subject to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy family, home,
or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his honour and reputation. Everyone has
the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
In respect of this right to privacy, Anand Grover, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to
Health, submitted a report to the UN General Assembly in October 2011, which stated,
“Criminal laws penalising and restricting induced abortion are the paradigmatic examples of
impermissible barriers to the realisation of women’s right to health and must be eliminated.
These laws infringe women’s dignity and autonomy by severely restricting decision-making by
women in respect of their sexual and reproductive health.” This also goes on to show that
there is a further violation of the right to dignity of the human person, provided for in
Section 34 of the Constitution as laws which restrict and penalize abortion are infringing
on the right to the dignity and autonomy of women as it limits their right to decision
making especially as it concerns their sexual and reproductive health. Also, in the case of
Roe v. Wade which was built on the precedent established in Griswold v. Connecticut,
the American Supreme Court held that laws banning abortion violated individual’s right to
privacy. It is obvious that the restrictive abortion law which exists in Nigeria is a clear
violation of this right as women have the right to choose what happens to their body.
Women should be given total control over their sexual and reproductive choices.
Furthermore, in relation to the right to health, on April 4 April 2016 the Report of the
Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable
standard of physical and mental health stated that; In connection to sexual and
reproductive health rights, the Special Rapporteur recommends that Governments
decriminalize abortion and guarantee all adolescents access to con dential, adolescent-
responsive and non-discriminatory sexual and reproductive health information, services
and goods, including on family planning, counselling, pre- conception care, maternal care,
sexually transmitted infections, diagnosis and treatment, as well as modern forms of
contraception, including emergency contraception, and safe abortion and post-abortion
services.
Also, in protection of the right to freedom from discrimination, the CEDAW Committee,
which monitors compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), said in a 2014 statement that “Unsafe abortion is a
leading cause of maternal mortality and morbidity. As such, States parties should legalize
abortion at least in cases of rape, incest, threats to the life and/or health of the mother, or
severe foetal impairment, as well as provide women with access to quality post-abortion care,
especially in cases of complications resulting from unsafe abortions. States parties should also
remove punitive measures for women who undergo abortion.” It has made similar
recommendations to many governments when it reviews their compliance with the treaty.
The recommendations made in these “concluding observations” typically call on
governments to legalise abortion in the circumstances noted above, decriminalize in all
cases, and guarantee access. Furthermore, UN special rapporteurs focusing on a variety of
human rights issues, as well as the UN working group on the issue of discrimination
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against women in law and practice, have called for decriminalisation of and access to
abortion services.
In addition, the UN Human Rights Committee, the Committee on Economic Social and
Cultural Rights, and the Committee against Torture, have also called removal of penalties
for abortion and for measures to ensure safe, legal access to abortion, also, the
Committee on the Rights of the Child has urged governments to decriminalize abortions in
all circumstances, and remove barriers to access.
5.0 THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE ABORTION LAWS AND THE GROWING
POPULATION AND THE CONSTANT NEED FOR FAMILY PLANNING
Over-population has long been projected as a reason for a legal abortion and advocates
pro er that only involuntary contraceptive abortion and sterilization measures can
prevent the impending catastrophe of over population. This suggests that pre-viability
foetus has no right but simply an unjust aggressor and a parasite. In such a case, the
mother is allowed an adequate defence against such an aggressor. And the only defence is
the elimination of the foetus, that is, abortion.
The UN General Assembly has for years, held the opinion that under no circumstances
should abortion be regarded as a method of family planning. However, WHO researchers
devise strategies to promote abortion and measure abortion access around the world,
setting the stage to help groups that will carry out this work permanently through a
network that would report, monitor, and evaluate uptake and utilization of contraception
and safe abortion care services. This rationale behind this is to reduce the growing
population of the world as there is a high increase in unwanted pregnancies which
eventually lead to abortions.
About 35 million abortions occur in developing countries each year. Approximately 20

million of these are unsafe abortions, and cause about 67,000 deaths as a result of related
complications. These deaths represent 13% of all pregnancy-related mortality and in some
countries as much as 25% of maternal deaths. In developing countries, one of every 75
women die of pregnancy or childbirth-related causes, compared to one of every 7,300
women in developed countries.
If contraception were accessible and used consistently and correctly by women wanting to
avoid pregnancy, maternal deaths would decline by an estimated 25–35%. Fifty- ve million
unintended pregnancies in developing countries occur every year to women not using a
contraceptive method. Another 25 million occur as a consequence of incorrect or
inconsistent use of a contraceptive method and method failure. This goes to show that
family planning reduces abortion, thus decreasing the risk of maternal death and it is
evident that family planning interventions have a role to play not only before a woman has
become pregnant, but after she has had an abortion or miscarriage.
The international health community has identi ed post-abortion care (PAC) as an

important strategy to reduce maternal mortality by treating complications related to
unsafe abortion and miscarriage, and by providing post abortion family planning
counseling and services to prevent repeated unplanned pregnancies and abortions.
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6.0 THE POSSIBLE INCORPORATION OF THE EXISTING ABORTION LAW IN OTHER
JURISDICTIONS INTO THE NIGERIAN LAW
The Nigerian law on abortion, as has been previously discussed, provides for a very strict
law on abortion as opposed to other jurisdictions. The negative e ects of this restrictive
law are many, having impacts on the woman, the unborn child and the society at large.
The question for consideration is whether this restrictive law on abortion can be abolished
in Nigeria and the liberal laws which exist in several other states can be incorporated.
There have been several attempts to liberalise the position of the Nigerian law on abortion
and these attempts have failed because they were not recognized and passed into law by
the National Assembly.
In 1981, the Nigerian Society for Gynaecology and Obstetrics sponsored a bill to reform
the abortion law in Nigeria, which was led by Dr. Obatayo Oguntayo. The Bill was called the
“Termination of Pregnancy Bill”, however, this bill was rejected and was not passed into
law. It proposed that;
It shall be lawful and legal when a pregnancy is terminated by a registered practitioner if
two registered practitioners are of the opinion formed in good faith:
• that the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk to life of a pregnant woman or
of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman or any existing children
of the family, greater than if the pregnancy was terminated; or
• that there is substantial risk that if the child was born it would su er such physical or
mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped
Also, in 1992, the Ministry of Health led by Prof. Ransom Kuti, sponsored a draft decree
called “The Termination of Unsafe Pregnancy and Other Related Matters”, which aimed at
reviewing and amending the Nigerian Abortion Law, however this bill was also rejected.
Despite this trend of rejection of liberalization of abortion bills, in the last ten years,
several countries have liberalized their abortion laws and due to advancement and growth,
it is safe to say that there could be a possible incorporation of this liberalized abortion law
in Nigeria.
6.0 CONCLUSION
The ndings of this article have provided a detailed explanation of the existing abortion
law in various jurisdictions in comparison with the existing abortion law in Nigeria.
Abortion continues to be a very pressing issue, raising various questions and comments.
However, as has been discussed earlier, each jurisdiction has the privilege to enact their
own existing abortion law. Nevertheless, the solution to unsafe abortion in Nigeria which is
a major problem facing the country is the liberalisation of the abortion law as it exists in
other jurisdictions, as a liberalised abortion law would allow women to carry out safe
abortions, reducing the risk of loss of life and other disadvantages which may come with
unsafe abortions
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2.0 HISTORY AND AN OVERVIEW OF ABORTION LAWS

3.0 ABORTION LAW IN NIGERIA

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