girls used all their resources or borrowed money on a pretext for the abortions, rather than 

getting all of it or part of it from the boyfriend.  Practicing serial monogamy, or having only one 

sexual partner at a time was a strategy used by girls and supported by some parents to avoid 

situations in which the boyfriend could deny responsibility for the pregnancy.   

Again, these findings somewhat contradict the assertion that the boyfriends or sexual 

partners of adolescent girls do not take responsibility for mistimed pregnancies or insist on 

abortions. Rather, it seems that in this community, getting pregnant and having a child together 

can be the first step in forming a long term union. In cases where the couple decided not to 

continue the pregnancy, the boyfriend usually took responsibility for the abortion fees, as much 

as he could afford. While it happened that some boyfriends refused responsibility for a 

pregnancy, this did not happen in the majority of cases and it should not be assumed that this is 

the rule. 

The general understanding among participants was that early abortions were safer. In 

addition, it seems that various abortion options and effective services were readily available in 

this community (although some are expensive), and that girls had no problems obtaining 

information about such options from networks of friends. Clinical abortions and one herbal 

option were both effective and available, according to the girls' reports, few complications were 

reported. Most girls had surgical abortions. It is not known whether the private clinics the girls 

attended were licensed facilities; however, most of the girls used this option and they reported 

few if any complications after the abortion. In the cases where the boyfriends refused to 

acknowledge paternity and the parents were not informed, the girls did not resort to  back street 

abortions,  but used the same means to obtain an abortion as the girls whose boyfriends paid for 

the abortions private clinics and/or vaginally inserted Aunty Mercy herbal medicine. 

The girls in this study reported having first trimester abortions, which supports the 

findings of Lassey's study (1995) of the complications of induced abortions conducted at Korle 

Bu Hospital, Accra. This also contradicts some general assumptions that adolescent girls tend to 

delay getting abortions and therefore suffer more complications. The girls' early awareness of 

their pregnancy, the availability of abortion information and services and their ability to raise the 

money contributed to obtaining safe abortions. This is not to dismiss the possibility that a 

minority of girls who are alienated in other ways from their family and the community may have 

tragic experiences with other abortive measures, but this does not appear to be the common 

experience in this community. Adolescent girls appeared to use abortion both to delay 

childbearing and to space children.    

These girls' experiences of adolescent pregnancy challenge some of the basic 

assumptions upon which health surveys of teenage pregnancy and abortion are built, and they 

can be used to refine survey strategies. One assumption is that  married  as opposed to 

 unmarried  is an unambiguous distinction that can be easily measured by asking one question. 

Another assumption is that those who are married are much less likely to get an abortion than 

those who are not. Although marriage practices were not the focus of this study, the lives 

described by girls suggest that getting pregnant is the first step in a longer process of union 

formation, and that there is variability in the process of becoming married and in the meaning of 

practices such as  knocking.  In some cases, it may take years for couples to get married, 

65