5 

Finding Out About the Pregnancy and Deciding Whether to Terminate  

  or to Continue the Pregnancy 

Interviewers asked participants open ended questions about each of their pregnancies 

for example, how they became pregnant, how they learned that they were pregnant, who was 

told, what reactions or recommendations the girls received, and why and how they decided to 

have an abortion or to carry the pregnancy to term? (As noted in chapter 2, collectively, the 29 

participants experienced a total of 49 pregnancies during their teen years.) The girls' descriptions 

of the process of deciding to keep or terminate a pregnancy indicate that their decisions cannot 

be separated from the process of forming stable child rearing unions in the community, or from 

the need for women to establish stable, independent means of financial support. Thus, some of 

the elements involved in forming stable unions are analyzed in the context of the decisionmaking 

process. The persons involved in deciding how to handle a pregnancy were most often the girl 

and her boyfriend; however, parents, guardians, and other adults were often involved in the 

process in various ways. Although the cases do not always fit neatly into one category, they are 

divided into the following sections to illustrate the points related to the decisionmaking process 

and the strategies the girls used to achieve their goals: 

1)  Cases where both the girl and her boyfriend agree on either an abortion or birth  

2)  Cases where the girl and her boyfriend do not agree on abortion or birth  

3)  Cases where the parents or guardians are involved in the decisionmaking process 

The first step in deciding whether to terminate or to continue an unintended pregnancy 

was to establish that one was indeed pregnant.  

5.1 I'm 

Pregnant 

When asked how and when they knew they were pregnant for the first time, most of the 

girls said that they suspected or knew they were pregnant shortly after their first missed period. 

For example, Wanda said she thought she was pregnant four days after her period didn't come, 

and she took immediate action, getting a pregnancy test at the Ussher Clinic. While some girls 

suspected that they were pregnant after the first missed period, others said they waited for a 

second month before confirming the pregnancy. For example, Faith, who occasionally misses 

periods, said the following: 

The first time I was pregnant, I did not feel that anything had happened to me. I missed 

my period for one month. This used to happen to me, so I did not think it was a 

pregnancy. But then, when I missed my period for a second month and I noticed a change 

in my body my navel protruded and my breasts became fuller a friend of mine told me 

where I could get a pregnancy test. [Faith] 

About half of the participants said that they knew for sure they were pregnant when the 

missed period occurred in combination with other symptoms, such as nausea and vomiting, 

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