A scoping review of abortion law liberalisation in Africa and prospects for Nigeria

Globally, there is a strong trend toward liberalizing safe abortion laws, with Africa leading in expanding legal grounds for safe abortion over the past two decades. Despite this progress, Nigeria still maintains restrictive, century-old abortion laws. Given Nigeria's alarming contribution to maternal deaths and unsafe abortions, this paper examines empirical evidence on the factors influencing abortion policy changes in African countries.The study utilised scoping reviews, which involved a search of databases - Web of Science, Scopus, JSTOR, PubMed - that yielded 8793 records. After screening for relevance, only 14 studies were included in the review, which focused on factors and processes of abortion law liberalisation in African countries. The study found the following factors vital in influencing liberalisation in most African countries: scaling-up awareness through research, medical society engagements, women's movement, the transnational influence of international human rights norms, and multi-stakeholders coalition. Drawing from the lessons of other African countries, liberalising Nigeria's abortion laws and providing accessible safe abortion services can significantly reduce unsafe, illegal abortions. To achieve policy reforms, researchers, advocates, and other stakeholders must strategically navigate Nigeria's murky abortion policy space collectively and strategically.