When 17-year-old Jane (not her real name) confided in her mother about her stepfather’s inappropriate behaviour, she was dismissed and warned never to speak ill of him.
Jane lost her biological father as a toddler, after which her mother remarried and relocated from their matrimonial home in Homabay to Kisumu, taking her only daughter along.
Now a teenager, Jane reveals to Kurunzi News that her stepfather repeatedly sexually assaulted her while her mother was away.
“My mother sells vegetables in the evenings, so whenever she left, my stepfather saw it as an opportunity,” she says.
One afternoon, after falling ill, Jane was taken to a nearby clinic, where tests confirmed she was three weeks pregnant. When she told her mother, she was ordered to keep the pregnancy a secret.
A mother’s silence
Desperate, Jane sought an abortion at a health facility but was turned away because she lacked parental consent. Distraught, she fled home and turned to a friend for help.
The two sought a quick solution so Jane could return to school before anyone discovered her pregnancy. They resorted to an unsafe abortion, which led to complications, forcing Jane into emergency medical care.
She now attends psychotherapy sessions at a community-based organization (CBO) in Kisumu.
Patricia Khavere, a nurse at Hamisi Level 4 Hospital and provider with MSI Reproductive Choices Kenya, says that many nurses fear to perform to procure abortion without parental consent.
“Many nurses have not been trained on the constitutional exceptions. They fear making the wrong call. So, they do nothing,” she says.
According to her, this requirement becomes a dangerous barrier when the perpetrator is a parent or close relative, the very person expected to grant consent.
Lawyer and reproductive rights advocate Eddy Orinda warns that the policy framework is discriminatory and unconstitutional in its effect.
Legal limbo’s deadly consequences
“Minors are considered too young to consent to sex, yet when they are victims of sexual abuse, the same system demands they obtain parental consent to access safe abortion. That’s not protection, that’s systemic cruelty,” he says.
In Kenya, the law requires anyone under 18 to obtain parental consent for medical procedures, including abortion, even in cases of rape, incest, or defilement.
Kenyan law allows abortion only under certain conditions when the life or health of the woman is at risk, or in cases permitted by any other written law.
“The Constitution, under Article 26(4), provides a broad framework, but specific policies remain ambiguous. Exceptions theoretically exist for minors who are victims of sexual violence, including incest and rape, but these provisions are inconsistently interpreted and poorly understood at the point of care,” Orinda says.
According to him, the contradiction, where minors are seen as too young to consent to sex or medical treatment, yet are denied agency over their reproductive health, creates a legal limbo with devastating consequences.
The lawyer now calls for reforms to prevent minors from procuring unsafe abortions.
“The national and county must explicitly exempt survivors of sexual violence from parental consent requirements. Also, the healthcare workers must be legally shielded when offering safe abortions to at-risk minors,” he said.
Sheila Otieno, the Founder of Compassionate Centre for Families, a community-based rescue organization supporting victims of gender-based violence in Kisumu County, says that the current policy framework assumes minors can’t make decisions about their bodies, but it also blocks access to services that could save their lives.
“We are seeing more girls, some as young as 12, come to us after attempting unsafe abortions. Many were abused by people they trusted. The requirement for parental consent is not protecting them, it’s exposing them to harm,” Otieno says.
Data from the African Population and Health Research Centre (APHRC), in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and the Guttmacher Institute, shows a worrying trend.
In 2023 alone, Kenya recorded approximately 792,694 induced abortions, an increase from the estimated 464,690 in 2012. The same study noted that 2.4 million out of 2.8 million pregnancies were unintended, highlighting a crisis in reproductive health and family planning.
Globally, MSI estimates that 67 women per minute undergo unsafe abortions. In Kenya, while national data on unsafe abortion remains fragmented, frontline providers say they are dealing with the aftermath of daily girls bleeding out, septic, or permanently injured.
“Women and girls fear prosecution, rejection, or stigma. They avoid health facilities even in emergencies. As long as the law is unclear and access is conditional, unsafe abortion will continue to thrive underground,” says the Reproductive Health and Rights Alliance.
While the 2019 High Court ruling affirmed abortion as a constitutional right and criticized the government for withdrawing national guidelines in 2012, enforcement remains patchy. In 2022, the court declared that prosecuting patients or providers offering abortion care was unconstitutional. Yet many providers still fear legal backlash or community reprisal, particularly when treating minors without formal consent.
Experts and rights groups argue that Kenya must urgently revise its adolescent reproductive health policies.
Clearer national guidelines on abortion, comprehensive sexuality education, and the removal of mandatory parental consent in specific contexts, particularly for survivors of sexual violence, could go a long way in reducing preventable deaths.
Sheila Otieno now advocates for the inclusion of survivor-centred models in healthcare delivery and law enforcement.
“We need laws that protect girls, not punish them. We need services that listen, not judge. And most of all, we need a society that stops blaming the victim,” Otieno says.
