I met Mrs. Audu at Nasarawa State University during one of our abortion conversations with students. She is a guidance counsellor, and as we spoke, she shared the story of a young woman she had once counselled.
The young woman had come to her early in her pregnancy, around six or seven weeks. She was considering an abortion. Mrs. Audu told her to keep the pregnancy. She advised her to give the pregnancy a chance and continue with her life. At the time, she believed she was giving the young woman the advice she needed.
About two months later, the young woman returned to her place of work in tears. She had been thrown out of her father’s house. She had no money. The man who had impregnated her had insulted her and pushed her away. She had stopped going to school. The people who had advised her to keep the pregnancy were no longer there to help her deal with what keeping it had come to mean. Mrs. Audu did not know what to do. All she could tell her was, “There is God. There is God.”
Four months later, the young woman returned again. This time, she was angry. She told Mrs. Audu that it was too late. She blamed her for the advice she had given her. Nobody who had encouraged her to continue the pregnancy had offered to take care of her or help her through the situation she was now living in.
Mrs. Audu carried that conversation with her.
Then, about a month later, she heard that the young woman had died after attempting to terminate the pregnancy through an unsafe method. She has carried the guilt of that experience ever since. When she told us this story, what stayed with me was not only what had happened to the young woman. It was also what had happened to the woman who had tried to help her, who was now experiencing secondary trauma.
Her story also left us assured of the simple but complicated fact that when a woman is determined not to continue a pregnancy, telling her simply to continue it does not make the circumstances that led her to consider abortion disappear.
Sometimes, it only means that when she eventually makes a different decision, she may have fewer safe options available to her.
This is one of the reasons MHR continues to talk about abortion.
In 2026, we kept making room for those stories. Through our Ajọse narrative change campaign, we continued exploring abortion through empathy, storytelling and everyday experiences. This is why we keep using storytelling. I keep returning to Mrs. Audu’s story because it reminds me why this work cannot be reduced to campaigns, hashtags, events or statistics. There was a young woman who needed to make a decision about her pregnancy. There was a counsellor who genuinely believed she was helping. There was a family that could not, or would not, support the reality that followed. There was a man who walked away from the responsibility. There was a young woman who eventually found herself without school, home, money or support.
And at the crux of this, there was a death that left another woman wondering whether she could have done something differently.
People need accurate information, safe options, compassionate support and the freedom to ask difficult questions without being judged. For us at MHR, that is telling stories that remind our beneficiaries that they are not alone. We create information. We engage the media. We talk to young people. We challenge misinformation. We make referrals. We listen.
I am learning every day that the public conversation and the private person are never really far apart. I think that the distance between you, me, and these realities of women and girls is disappearing every day. I urge you to think about that too.
Happy International Safe Abortion Day.
With love,
Alu Azege
Executive Director
Media Health & Rights Initiative of Nigeria (MHR)
Host of Love Matters Naija & PadiChat
