Ghana records 200,000 abortions in 2017 - Report

Ghana recorded 200,000 abortions in 2017, out of which 71 per cent were illegal.

The country also records an estimated 767,200 unintended pregnancies each year. The figure represents 53 per cent of total pregnancies.

This was made known in Accra at the presentation of the findings of a research conducted in 2017 to ascertain the incidence of abortions in Ghana.

The research was carried at the national and zonal estimates, using the ‘Abortion Incidence Complications Methodology” (AICM).

The research was conducted by the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organisation committed to advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights in the United States, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, United States and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).

Marie Stopes International and the Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana provided support for the research.

A Professor at the School of Public Health at KNUST, Dr. Eastmon Otupiri said many women in Ghana sought illegal abortions, which varied widely in terms of safety, adding unsafe abortions contributed substantially to Ghana’s high maternal mortality, which was estimated at 310 deaths per 100,000 lice births in 2017.

In 1.4 million pregnancies in 2017, he said there were 39 per cent births and eight per cent miscarriages, as against 23 per cent of births, 23 per cent of abortions and seven per cent of miscarriages in unintended pregnancies.

Nationally, he said 767,200 of all pregnancies, representing 53 per cent, were unintended each year.

Dr. Otupiri said, however, the unintended pregnancy rate varied widely across the country’s three ecological zones from 50 in the Northern zone to 94 in the Coastal zone and 131 in the middle zone, a situation that made abortion rates also vary in the respective zones.

A Senior Research Scientist of Guttmacher Institute, Dr. Sarah Keogh, said nationally, 70.8 per cent of all abortions done in Ghana were illegal anc the stakeholders after the research, estimated 25.5 per cent of women who had an illegally induced abortion in Ghana in 2017 received treatment for complications in a health facility.

The AICM also estimated 5.7 per 1000 Ghanaian women aged 15 to 49 obtained treatments at a facility for complications resulting from illegal or legal abortions.

Despite Ghana’s relatively liberal abortion law, and efforts to expand access to safe abortion services, Dr. Keogh said, it was unfortunate that 71 per cent of the nearly 200,000 abortions in Ghana recorded in 2017 were illegal.

They are therefore calling on government and non-governmental partners to reduce the burden of unsafe abortion by educating the public on the country’s abortion laws.

Abortion is permissible in cases of rape, incest, foetal abnormality or disease, of defilement of a child, or if they are performed to protect physical or mental health.

However, such persons are to receive medical attention from registered and trained personnel in an approved health facility.

Source: graphic.com.gh