agreed and was made to pay a fine of 300,000 cedis and a sewing machine for making a 

schoolgirl pregnant. [Yolanda]  

After giving birth, Yolanda said she dropped out of school because she felt too ashamed 

to continue: 

I got pregnant and had to stop going to school . No one did [asked me to stop school]. I 

advised myself against going to school when I realized I was pregnant usually when 

girls get pregnant in school others start teasing her when they get to know about the 

pregnancy. I didn't want to go through the humiliation from school, so I stopped. 

[Yolanda] 

Another participant, who had been pregnant twice, each time by a different man, had 

problems getting her second boyfriend to take responsibility for the pregnancy. 

When I got pregnant and he did not mind me. [Pauline] 

She found a third boyfriend who agreed to take responsibility for the pregnancy. 

It was the man I'm seeing now, that I had two children with. He looked after me until I 

gave birth. [Pauline] 

In all of the cases where the participants said that their boyfriends refused to 

acknowledge the pregnancy, the girls either opted for an abortion or they involved others 

(parents or another boyfriend) to establish a father for the child. In the cases where they had 

abortions, the girls had to pay for the medicine and procedure themselves.  

5.3.2  Girl Wants Abortion, Boyfriend or Husband Wants Birth  

The main reasons that participants cited for wanting to have an abortion, even when their 

boyfriends/husbands wanted them to give birth, was to maintain or improve their sources of 

financial support and improve their earning or employment potential the same reasons given in 

situations where both the girl and her boyfriend wanted to terminate the pregnancy. This 

happened even when a couple already had one child together. Another less frequently cited 

reason for having an abortion was that the girl did not love the boyfriend and wanted to avoid 

further involvement with him. In most of the situations where the girl wanted an abortion, neither 

the girl's nor the boy's parents were brought into the process of deciding how to handle the 

pregnancy. The general understanding was that a girl should get the consent of the boyfriend/ 

husband either to terminate or continue a pregnancy. This did not always happen, however, 

according to the girls' reports. 

The consensus seemed to be that a girl should get the consent of her boyfriend or husband 

to have an abortion. In the three cases where the couple disagreed, one girl eventually obtained 

the consent and help of her boyfriend, and two girls obtained abortions on their own. In two 

other cases where there was disagreement, the girls used home remedies to induce abortion, but 

were unsuccessful.  

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