Women's experiences of the abortion law in Cameroon: "What really matters"

While prosecutions of women who have had an illegal abortion are rare in Cameroon, women who have a legitimate claim to a legal abortion, e.g. following rape, can rarely take advantage of it. This is because the law in Cameroon is not applied, either when it is violated or when it is indicated. This paper examines the histories of four young women who became pregnant and had an abortion in the Anglophone region of the Cameroon Grassfields. Three of them became pregnant following rape or sexual coercion, in one case by the girl's priest, in the second case by her employer's son, and in the third case by a stranger. The fourth young woman, who sold sex for survival money and food, had two abortions while in prison for committing infanticide following a failed attempt to abort an earlier pregnancy. The four young women were interviewed as part of a qualitative, hospital-based study among 65 women who had had abortions in 1996-97. The women's affecting personal histories illuminate the reality of living under a restrictive abortion law, the troubling conditions in which they have to manage their lives, and the harsh circumstances in which they become pregnant and seek (but may not find) a safe abortion.