In Senegal, abortion is illegal under the penal code and is highly criminalized – between one-quarter and one-third of the population of women prisoners are incarcerated based on charges of abortion or infanticide. However, while illegal under the penal code, abortion is allowed under the code of medical ethics if three doctors, one of whom must be appointed by the court, confirm that the procedure is necessary to save the pregnant person’s life. Currently, there are no exceptions under the law for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.
In this restrictive legal environment, understanding of abortion is limited. Estimates of abortion incidence in Senegal exist, but the data are outdated. Further, the data do not explore the experiences of abortion seekers throughout their abortion journey, including, but not limited to, their decision-making processes, the methods they use to access abortion, their experiences of stigma, as well as the perspectives of health care workers and community members regarding abortion.
Given this context and the importance of documenting more comprehensively abortion experiences and perspectives in Senegal, a team of four partners, Action for Change, Alliance Nationale des jeunes pour la Santé de la Reproduction et la Planification Familiale, Ibis Reproductive Health, and Mobilizing Activists around Medication Abortion Network conducted in-depth interviews in the Dakar and Sédhiou regions with 21 participants between October and December 2024. These participants included 12 participants who had an abortion in their lifetime, five health care workers, including midwives and Badiénou Gox (neighborhood godmothers), and four community members.
The study had four primary objectives: (1) Understand the social, political and cultural factors influencing abortion seeking; (2) Identify the abortion methods and approaches used by women; (3) Understand community members and health care workers perceptions of abortions; and (4) Understand health care workers experiences providing post-abortion care.
Our preliminary findings highlighted that cultural and religious beliefs play a significant role in participants’ perceptions of abortion. For some participants, abortion was perceived as an immoral and reprehensible act; for others, although abortion is contrary to their religious values, their perceptions differed according to the circumstances that resulted in a pregnancy, indicating more acceptability of abortion in cases of rape and incest. Participants reported using a variety of methods to terminate a pregnancy, including medication abortion, surgical interventions, traditional methods, and/or ingestion of toxic chemicals. These methods varied depending on access to health information, resources, and services.
Our findings add to the limited existing research on the experiences of abortion seekers and general perceptions of abortion in Dakar and Sédhiou and provide needed data to support ongoing advocacy efforts in Senegal to reform the abortion law and protect reproductive health rights.
This work builds upon our previous work in the region, exploring the use of an alternative indirect method of abortion measurement (the list experiment) to explore its ability to reduce underreporting of abortion in this restrictive context:
Reducing underreporting of abortion in surveys: Results from two test applications of the list experiment method in Malawi and Senegal