of aborting, the man will still go ahead and get another woman, but they would lose a 

daughter forever. So I listened to my parents and carried the pregnancy full term. . . my 

boyfriend too occasionally sent me money for my medical bills and food. But I stayed 

with my parents. . . he comes often to the house to give us our chop money. [Lily]  

In two cases, the parents sided with the boyfriend and agreed with the decision to 

terminate the pregnancy. Diana described what happened to her, as follows: 

I told my boyfriend about it and he said I couldn't be pregnant. He then suggested an 

abortion I wanted to have a baby. So I went and told my mother about the pregnancy 

and she also insisted I go for an abortion since I'm still too young to mother a child she 

didn't suggest it, but commanded that the pregnancy be aborted. So I had no 

choice...because she cares for me. If I go ahead with the pregnancy she might send me 

away from her house. [Diana] 

In summary, the process of negotiating whether to terminate a pregnancy cannot be 

separated from the process of forming stable child rearing unions in the community, nor can it be 

separated from the need of women to keep or establish a stable means of income. The habitual 

monitoring of the menstrual cycle by girls led them to know or suspect, generally within one to 

two months, that they were pregnant. This advance knowledge gave girls enough time to 

negotiate a plan to cope with the pregnancy within their social network and still have a first 

trimester abortion. The persons most often involved in deciding whether to terminate an 

unintended teenage pregnancy were the girls and their boyfriends. Parents were also important to 

the process in some but not most cases; they played various roles, including instructing the girls 

on the proper course of action with the boyfriends, providing advice and money, accompanying 

them for the abortion procedure, and sometimes by deciding about abortion or birth.   

The participants made it clear, through both what they said and did, that acknowledge 

ment of paternity by the boyfriend to the girl's family was a fundamental factor in deciding 

whether to terminate the pregnancy or carry the child to term, regardless of the amount of his 

financial contribution. In all the cases where the father did not acknowledge paternity, the girls 

opted for a secret abortion. The knocking rite, which has various meanings from simple 

acknowledgement of paternity to engagement or marriage was performed in all the cases where 

the couple decided to have the child. Some girls referred to their partners as husbands if they 

already had children with them and if the partner had performed a knocking rite. Others with the 

same history did not. The couple usually did not live together after the rite, but the boyfriend or 

husband was responsible for contributing chop money and paying for all the medical needs. 

Besides an acknowledging father, other conditions for beginning a family with a boyfriend were 

that the girl be out of school and that she not be completely financially dependent on her parents 

but have some form of income, if only by hawking food items in the market.  

When both the girl and her boyfriend wanted an abortion, it was for the following 

reasons: to delay child rearing until one or the other (or both) established a better means of 

support, to avoid shame if the girl was in school, or because they did not want to be together. 

Abortion was also used by couples to space their children by about two to three years.  

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