Stakeholders have called for greater legal protection for survivors of rape and incest, urging that women who become pregnant through sexual violence should have access to safe abortion.

They spoke at a programme organised by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and the Women Advocates Research and Documentation Centre (WARDC) on maternal health, healthcare access and legislative action, as well as the “Unfinished Lives” portrait activation to mark International Safe Abortion Day.

The stakeholders said the law should recognise the realities of rape, incest, severe foetal abnormalities and the mental health of women. They argued that forcing rape survivors to continue pregnancies resulting from assaults amounted to “double victimisation”.

The programme was held in collaboration with UNFINISHED, a Nigerian advocacy campaign calling on the National Assembly to complete the country’s existing legal framework on abortion care. The campaign seeks an expansion of the existing legal grounds for abortion, rather than decriminalisation.

The Executive Secretary of NHRC, Dr Tony Ojukwu, said unsafe abortion remained a leading preventable cause of maternal mortality in Nigeria, noting that the current legal framework left many women without access to safe, lawful care.

He advocated a tightly bounded, medically justified expansion of the grounds for termination of pregnancy, particularly to cover rape, incest, severe foetal abnormalities and the mental health of the woman.

“This is not about abortion on demand; it is about saving lives. It is about ensuring that when a woman faces a medically justifiable crisis, the law does not force her into the shadows,” Ojukwu said.

He urged stakeholders to move from advocacy to legislative action, identifying lawmakers who could champion the proposed reforms and ensuring that healthcare providers were protected.

The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Senator Ipalibo Harry Banigo, stressed the need to remove barriers to healthcare access. She said the legislature remained committed to strengthening the legal framework, expanding social health insurance and improving accountability in secondary and tertiary healthcare.

“True success will be achieved when no Nigerian woman risks her life to give life,” Banigo said.

Also speaking, the Senator representing Kogi Central, Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, called for a broader national conversation on abortion and maternal healthcare, saying legal reform must go hand in hand with functioning hospitals, qualified doctors, affordable care and support for women who choose either to terminate a pregnancy or carry it to term.

She questioned whether Nigeria’s hospitals, healthcare workers, medicines and emergency-care infrastructure were adequately equipped to provide safe services, particularly in rural communities.

Akpoti-Uduaghan said her experience establishing a maternity centre through crowdfunding showed that building facilities alone was insufficient, as finding doctors willing to work in remote communities remained difficult.

She said the country faced not only a shortage of healthcare facilities but also a shortage of healthcare professionals willing and able to serve underserved communities.

The lawmaker also raised concerns about the quality and availability of medicines, hospitals’ capacity to handle emergencies and the compensation of healthcare workers.

“I don’t think we can tidy the problems of mortality by just amending the laws.” She said, arguing that Nigeria should not simply replicate reproductive-health policies from countries with substantially different healthcare systems.
She added that maternal mortality figures might not fully reflect the situation in rural communities, where pregnancy- and childbirth-related deaths could go undocumented.

The Regional Director of WARDC, Emanuella Azu, called for reform of Nigeria’s abortion laws, arguing that the restrictive framework left women and girls vulnerable to unsafe abortion.

Azu said existing laws permit abortion only in limited circumstances and urged policymakers to review the framework to widen access to safe abortion services and better protect women’s health and rights.

She said unsafe abortion remained an important contributor to preventable maternal deaths, adding that the “Unfinished Lives” campaign sought to connect the experiences represented in its portraits with what the organisation considers unfinished legal reform.

Azu specifically called for greater legal protection for survivors of rape and incest, saying women who become pregnant through sexual violence should have access to safe abortion where continuing the pregnancy could cause severe psychological or other harm.

“When a rape survivor cannot terminate such a pregnancy, it amounts to double victimisation,” she said, adding that survivors could live with the trauma throughout their lives.

She urged policymakers to introduce laws and policies that protect women’s lives and expand access to safe abortion services.