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What is clandestine abortion and what can be done to mitigate this fast becoming public health concern?

A webinar to understand the concept of clandestine abortion and how it narrowed its way into the Cameroon health system was organized by Dynamic Femme via Google meet on Wednesday 27th August 2025 at 9:30 AM. The participants were expected to understand what clandestine abortion is all about, its consequence and how it can be solved.

During the meeting, it was unanimously acclaimed that getting an unwanted pregnancy is something which have come to stay. No matter how we sensitize people and take measures, it’s impossible to eradicate this problem completely. It is rather unfortunate that most of these unwanted pregnancies end up in a clandestine abortion. The good news that we all agreed on at the meeting is that we can somehow try to limit the prevalence of clandestine abortion.

Some of the measures we can all take to solve this fast becoming public health concern according to the guest on board include;

 Teenage pregnancy. Imagining a young girl her teen age who gets pregnant and her organs are not fully developed. Letting her put to birth brings her to great danger, one of which is maternal and infant death. As such the presenter thinks that if teenagers who in the process of experiencing life gets pregnant and desire to have an abortion should be allowed to do so. This is because, if access is denied they will still go behind and try to do it using very dangerous measures.

 Another case that the presenter presented was the case of a woman who puts to birth and after a few months, finds out she is pregnant again. According to him, these women will do everything possible to get rid of the pregnancy. As such, instead of letting them go endanger their lives by trying to do it illegally, the government could actually make this one of the exceptions to have access to safe abortion.

 The last but not the least proposal he made was in case of incest. A brother sister relationship or a father daughter relationship that leads to pregnancy should be granted access to safe abortion. The offspring might come with health difficulties because of the same genes. The problem of misplaced identity of the child might come up when the child grows. At this point it would have been preferred that the pregnancy be terminated an early stage.

None the less, there should be a time frame that the pregnancy should be terminated, later than that it could be considered as murder.
The lessons drawn from this webinar include;

 Restrictions to safe abortion access don’t limit clandestine abortion, but rather pave way for more abortions that are unsafe.

 Some exceptions should be added to the already existing ones to reduce the rate of clandestine abortion.

 Emphasis should be laid on sensitization campaigns concerning the dangers of clandestine abortion.

 Normalize talking about access to safe abortion as one of the ultimate solutions to clandestine abortion.

The meeting ended at 10:30. In summery it was an interesting session with participants expressing the desire to be part of the subsequent editions.