A conflict of interest: a socio-legal analysis of the barriers to accessing comprehensive abortion care in Ghana

This study is a socio-legal analysis of the impact of abortion laws on reproductive health policies (National Health Insurance Scheme), and how these translate into the violations of the reproductive health rights of women and girls in Ghana. The study does this by investigating how the knowledge of the law affects choices and experiences of young women in seeking abortion services and the legal implications on implementation strategies geared towards reducing unsafe abortions in Ghana. This study uses the concepts of legal consciousness and mobilization as its theoretical frameworks and, methodologically uses a qualitative approach to analyse the data collected. The study argues that legal barriers indeed present itself through the limitations created by the law and its translations. However, legal barriers alone are unable to explain why the reproductive health rights of women are violated and why unsafe abortions still persists among young people. Thus, non-legal barriers such as religion, stigma, individual and institutional culture are also discussed in the study as enhancers of barriers to the reproductive health rights of young women. This study argues that the selective isolation of what is now identified as ‘elective’ abortion from the National Health Insurance Scheme is a violation of the reproductive health rights of young women in Ghana founded on the fact that the abortion laws provide a flexible opportunity for young women, but national policies like the National Health Insurance Scheme only accommodates medical emergencies leaving young women who do not have medically proven emergencies to resort to unsafe methods.