Ghana - quietly extending options to women

Juliana Kweais has a small scar on her bottom lip, from the first time she witnessed an abortion. The sharp blow to her mouth was delivered by her grandmother, after the then-13-year-old Kweais had asked why her auntie had given "birth" to a bloody sack. Kweais's eyes glaze over as she recalls that painful night, almost 20 years ago. Her aunt had been unmarried, and their family too poor to support another child. By swallowing a herbal medicine of ground stones, and abrototo, pepre, and hentea - leaves mostly found in the forests of rural Ghana - her aunt went into labor, she recalled. Non-medical abortions are frequent in Ghana, where abortion is illegal. Yet, as more people witness the suffering and deaths of women who've attempted unsafe abortions, more international organizations are trying to provide birth control, or to exploit legal loopholes to carry out abortions.