Gloria is 22 years old and lives in a traditional village in eastern Ghana where abortion and contraception are not only difficult to access, but widely disapproved of. She has had two abortions but won’t tell her parents because she fears she will be thrown out of the family home. Gloria knew continuing with her pregnancy meant the end of her education, so she enlisted the help of a friend and attempted an abortion using a mixture of a local plants and stones, which she ground into a paste and inserted into her uterus. When that didn’t work, Gloria tried a branch. After a second self-induced abortion — using a ground-up, broken bottle, sea water and detergent — she said, “I bled and bled and bled for more than five days.” Gloria now lives with constant pain and won’t see a doctor. The stigma is so great that Gloria will not approach her own mother, who is a midwife.