sexual experience and, thus, may have started having sex earlier than they would have otherwise. 

Surprisingly, these relationships often continued, and thus it seems date rape may be accepted in 

the community.   

All of the participants said that their first pregnancies and most of the subsequent ones 

were accidental or mistimed, whether they were married or not. There is no indication that the 

girls got pregnant because they wanted to hold on to their boyfriends, force their boyfriends to 

marry them, or to gain economic or social status in the community. The main reason they got 

pregnant was that they either did not use a contraceptive method or they used one ineffectively.  

The most common contraceptive method used was periodic abstinence. Besides parents 

or guardians, and friends, teachers influenced or reinforced the girls' understanding of the 

menstrual cycle and of pregnancy prevention methods. (None of the girls mentioned learning 

about the fertile period from health care providers.) The problem with the information on 

periodic abstinence coming from parents and teachers was that it was based on nonbiological 

understandings of the fertile period. Therefore, although the girls practiced periodic abstinence, 

they did it in ways that promoted pregnancy rather than prevented it. About half of the 

participants said that they had tried condoms, but only about a third said that they ever used them 

regularly. The girls were hesitant to use any other modern method before they had children. A 

few of the girls tried hormonal methods, usually after attending a clinic for postnatal care.  

Overall, these girls tended to have repeated unintended pregnancies during their teens and 

beyond. The girls' awareness of their menstrual cycle, however, was remarkable and generally 

led to early knowledge of the pregnancy once it occurred. This allowed them time to negotiate 

with boyfriends, parents, and others about how to handle the pregnancy and to seek information 

about abortion services from friends and others if necessary. The girls' descriptions of the 

process of deciding whether to terminate a pregnancy indicate that their decisions cannot be 

separated from the process of forming stable child rearing unions in the community nor from the 

need for women to keep or establish stable, independent means of financial support. 

The decision whether to terminate a pregnancy or to continue it to term was made in 

several ways, depending on the social circumstances and the people involved. Most commonly, 

the girls and their boyfriends jointly decided whether to terminate the pregnancy. In many cases, 

they decided to continue the pregnancy and the boy then acknowledged paternity by performing 

a public rite called  knocking  or a similar rite. This was the first step toward a long term union 

and implied that the male involved would provide chop money and other support. If the decision 

to have an abortion was made jointly, the boyfriend often supplied the girl with money to have 

the abortion, although this did not necessarily cause the relationship to end.  

Second, in situations where the adolescent depended on parents or guardians, or when the 

couple did not agree on a plan of action, the parents and guardians decided. About a third of the 

time parents and guardians opted for abortion.  Depending on their decision, parents and 

guardians usually supplied some financial support for the child and/or the procedure.  

Third, for a minority of girls whose boyfriends denied responsibility for the pregnancy, 

the responsibility for terminating the pregnancy fell to the girl or her family.  In such cases, these 

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