Guidelines to a Safe Abortion in Nigeria

“Culture should change as people do because people should define culture.”

Text message notifications from the right one are the best things. The pop-up presents possibilities: Zikoko listicles, SoundCloud playlists, Twitter threads, bathroom selfies, carefully curated emoji art imitating all of life, love, and lust. Worst case scenario, she could be texting to let me know—amidst all the above—that she has not seen her period in a minute. But even so, a text message was the best case because she did not see the blatant disbelief—bordering on outright denial—weigh down my jaw ‘til it dripped drool. She did not see my eyes roll into my head in search of any memory of pulling out. She did not see my nose breathe flames when I remembered her saying she was on the pill.

Text messages are the best things because you can calmly brush off the need to ask questions—it is too late for that, understanding how it happened would not change what happened—and casually tell her of all the people you knew who thought they were pregnant because their periods came a few days late and her worries are probably nothing. If she tries to apologize for her carelessness, remind her you were careless in equal measure and then apologize in return. If she puts the blame entirely on you, ignore the former and apply only the latter—apologize in return. If she is too scared to either accept or place the blame on you, claim the blame and then apologize in return. If she is actually carrying your baby, the least you could carry, to lift some weight off her, is the blame.

“Have you eaten?” I continued typing, trying to return the chat to its regular track.

“Rice and stew,” for the third time this week and it was just Tuesday.

“Looool how far this guy? Rice and stew go dey grow for your belle oh,” because I’m a funny guy.

“Lol well, better than a baby,” because she’s a funnier girl who has absolutely no regard for the impending pressures of motherhood. But I could not be outperformed at my own game.

“Mummy of jokes, soon to be mummy of bouncing baby boy.” I did not get a reply; her silence was the riotous sound of defeat.

Jokes are good; they keep both of you from panicking. Panicking is bad; it never solves any problem. At this point you are not even certain there is a problem yet, but you cannot take chances. You might be tempted to take chances if you are unmarried, unprepared to bring a child into the world, and unwilling to accept responsibility or if you do not have the time or balls to get properly checked at a clinic, but do not panic. Try to be certain. The cheap piss-on-a-stick test kits masquerading as certainty come with no manual and are probably the only things in the world you cannot learn on YouTube. The Clearblue digital test kit is actual certainty, plus it is really fancy—bright colors and curvy edges—which is really reassuring. Actual certainty is good if the test turns out positive, not so much if it’s negative and you are stuck with a piece of plastic that could have bought you both dinner at Spurs, with dessert.

We had no such regrets about our purchase. Her result came out positive, a clear blue cross on the digital display. The crosses on the tiles of her bathroom walls grew bigger, closing in on me till my eyes shut. And even then, I was marooned in a sea of clear blue packets of Pampers and Cussons baby lotion. When did the leaders of the free world gather to confer blue as the universal color of all things pregnancy? My mind became a depraved danfo drive, racing from one bus stop of fearfulness to another—Would I have to marry? Could I afford to marry? Did I want to marry? What would Pastor say?—slowing at each thought, enough to pick up more burden, but never enough for the previous burden to be shed. I felt her lips press against my forehead and my eyes opened.

“I can’t keep this baby,” she said, looking down at my teary eyes as the engine of my depraved danfo blew, huffing and puffing till it stuttered to a stop. “I’m not just ready.”

I tilted my head up, raising my lips to punctuate her last word with a kiss. Her last word was the last word; there was nothing left to be said.

The pregnancy was her own thing: The change in her body, the change in her lifestyle, maybe even the change from her living to her dying and, of course, the choice of whether or not to be pregnant at all. I, a man, could not choose what she should do with her body and her pregnancy, I could only choose to be willing and able to support her eventual choice. Society could not choose for her either; it would neither guarantee her access to safe abortion and healthcare if she refused to keep it nor would it guarantee her child’s basic needs if she decided to keep it. Society could only choose to be willing and able to support her eventual choice. Culture should never choose for her. If the only argument for making a choice is that “Our ancestors did it,” the argument is very problematic. “Our ancestors” once argued for slavery and human sacrifices when it benefited them. Culture should change as people do because people should define culture and not vice versa.

*

In the culture we had defined for our relationship, our vices were in verses—she preferred Kendrick and Chance, and I was more inclined to Burna and Eazi. So we found warmth on the cold floor, resting in each other’s arms and vibing to SoundCloud from my phone. She grasped at my neck as soon as I changed tracks and she heard the opening instrumental, but strangling me could not choke out the bitter irony as Olamide croaked “your summer body is loading, loading, loading . . .”

I slithered to the floor. She collapsed on top of me, head to my chest and deep in thought. “At least my breasts would get fuller meanwhile.”

“Shame,” I whispered, my breath strained under the weight of her body. “I think your breasts are perfect.”

“So why did you give me belle then? You knew they were going to get bigger, didn’t you?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. It’s just that you kept telling me to go faster and not stop. Don’t worry, next time . . .”

“There won’t be a next time if you don’t take care of this time.”

“I’ll handle it, trust me.”

“Handle it” meant taking absolute control of planning and execution. I knew because it was the way I handled it when she told me she had not eaten all day at work and I needed to handle dinner, the way I told her I would only travel to Abeokuta for the book festival if she handled the trip. But I had never handled anything like that before, so I went to the Rooftop, a tender euphemism for our neighborhood bar, because you could always find somebody who could do anything and everything at a neighborhood bar.

I spoke to the bar owner, a tender euphemism for the gatekeeper to the overheard secrets of drunken men, and she told me to speak to the philandering accountant. The philandering accountant suggested Cytotec; he had bought it for girls at Lagos State University on several occasions and it worked like a charm, save for infrequent bouts of spotting. But the Osun State University girl he was with said spotting was occasionally a tender euphemism for bleeding out your bowels plus a pint. Another girl at the next table corroborated her claim.

The pilot at our table said he had impregnated a girl in Accra and she had handled it at Marie Stoppes. We googled Marie Stoppes’s Lagos contact details and it was not available, so we cursed Nigeria till the Doctor walked in and mentioned he had a colleague from medical school who ran a clinic that handled pregnancies. The Doctor and I visited the clinic the next day and the gateman told us the resident doctor had relocated to America the previous week because Buhari don spoil country. We were back at Rooftop the next night discussing more alternatives to handling the situation. The philandering accountant was with a University of Ibadan girl and she suggested her doctor at Egbeda. We called him to no avail. And just as the green bottles got as dry as our jokes, he texted us a day, a time, and a fee.

“The Nigerian Criminal Code is currently enforced in southern states. The abortion laws of the Criminal Code are expressed within sections 228, 229, and 230. Section 228 states that any person providing a miscarriage to a woman is guilty of a felony and up to 14 years of imprisonment. Section 229 states that any woman obtaining a miscarriage is guilty of a felony and up to imprisonment for 7 years. Section 230 states that anyone supplying anything intended for a woman’s miscarriage is also guilty of a felony and up to 3 years of imprisonment.” Hospitals would not help you. In succinct terms, fuck the government and discuss options discreetly at your neighborhood bar.

I told her, as the doctor told me to tell her, not to eat or drink that Sunday and she complied. We forayed, through mud roads and tense nerves, to Egbeda. The Rooftop Doctor’s doctor colleague received us with few comments or questions. He spoke about his state-of-the-art equipment, just imported from China, and his vast experience, then got to the matter at the hand. She was anesthetized and taken away to the theatre. The Rooftop Doctor’s doctor colleague cracked a few more jokes then disappeared himself, while I was left in the reception with three of his nurses.

I could not tell if I was the topic of their conversation, but I crossed my feet and struck the Scarface movie poster pose, as if daring them to do their worst, to gossip about or chastise me. But beneath the carefully crafted surface of indifference, my nerves were fluttering. I tried scrolling through Twitter. None of the jokes seemed funny, none of the Church selfies seemed pretty. I put away my phone when her cousin popped up on my feed and my mind raced to the DMs I would have to send her if events in the theatre took a wrong turn. But the Rooftop Doctor’s doctor colleague returned in fifteen minutes, still as lighthearted as when he departed.

He said the situation had been handled, though she still needed about thirty minutes to sleep off the anesthesia. I asked him for a little favor, and when he heard the details, he smiled and agreed to it, taking my phone to the theatre where she lay and leaving SoundCloud playing Olamide’s “Summer Body” on repeat.

The last and most important necessity to a safe abortion is trust, just as she trusted me, just as I trusted the Doctor at Rooftop, who in turn trusted his colleague, just as the Doctor’s colleague trusted his tools. Maybe there is no such thing as a safe abortion with such uncertainty, especially considering the weight of emotion and circumstance, and especially when you cannot find the free Marie Stoppes clinic about ten kilometers down the Isheri-Lasu expressway just before the Igando bus stop. But nothing can be achieved without trust.