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When Teta graduated from high school in 2015, she had big plans: attend college and become a medical doctor. But when the then-17-year-old discovered she was pregnant, that bright future was cast into doubt.
The father of the unborn child, her boyfriend of four years, denied the baby was his. Afraid of the shame and disgrace that would come with being an unwed teenage mother, Teta sought an abortion.
'I was scared and confused,' said Teta. 'I had no plans of becoming a mother at age seventeen, my family and everybody looked up to me.'
Teta said a friend helped her obtained a herb, commonly known as 'Christmas leaf'. They boiled it into a tea that she drank. Over a few days Teta suffered indescribable pain as her body expelled the fetus.
'The whole place I was sitting was bloody. I bled. I bled. I thought I was going to die.'
Like most African countries, Liberia has firm restrictions on abortion. It is illegal for a health worker to execute an abortion except, in cases of rape, incest, fetal abnormality or risk to the woman's physical or mental health. Two physicians must certify medical exceptions and evidence of rape and incest must be provided to the health minister, a county attorney or police. Illegal abortion is punishable with up to five years in prison. The law's backers say that means safe abortion is available to wealthy women, leaving the poor with only dangerous options.
Liberia's new public health law, which was passed by the House of Representatives in 2022, is currently being debated in a special session by the Senate, where it is facing a barrage of opposition from abortion opponents. A provision in the bill, which contains a range of other public health elements, would make abortion legal up to 18 weeks of pregnancy as long as it is done by a doctor. The original version of the bill made it 24 weeks, but lawmakers revised it to 18 weeks.
The Ministry of Health worked with health law experts in the U.S. and U.K. to draft the law after a major country-first survey released in April by the Ministry in partnership with the Clinton Health Access Initiative and others found unsafe abortions caused shocking...