This is the story of my mother’s friend. I got part of it from my mother and I got the missing details from the woman herself. Her name is Aunty Ama. Now, let me preface my narration by saying that I am not condemning any church or the disciplinary measures they take against fornicators or women who give birth out of wedlock. However, I strongly believe the church must rethink its approach and find better ways of addressing such issues.

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I am a product of teenage pregnancy. My mother was in secondary school when she got pregnant. Unlike these times when teenage girls can still go to school when they are pregnant, the rules were strict back then. Pregnant meant end of education for a girl. So she had to drop out of school to have me.

Aunty Ama, also got pregnant around the same time. According to my mother, many people advised my grandmother to make her get rid of the pregnancy.

“She is too young and brilliant to have that child. Let her end it and continue her education,” they said.

However, my great-grandmother opposed it vehemently. She asked, “What if this is the only child my  grandaughter will ever have?” She even threatened that if anyone dared touch the pregnancy, she would have the person imprisoned, no matter the cost.

As if she was prophesying, I turned out to be the only child of my mother. She married about four times afterward but never conceived again. That was even why all those marriages collapsed.

Meanwhile, when she was pregnant with me, my father denied the pregnancy, and my grandmother abandoned my mother.

Luckily, my great-grandmother, who was very wealthy, took her in, cared for her until she gave birth, and even named me after her own mother.

Now, let me talk about my mother’s friend who was also pregnant at the time. She gave birth, but sadly, her baby died a few months later.

Aunty Ama was a member of a very popular church in Ghana. Along the line, she got in a relationship with a wealthy man who worked at a big government agency. Although the man was married, he wanted to make her his second wife and even begged her to accept his proposal. She refused because her church was against it. Regardless, she loved this man too much to let him go.

This man was very good to her and even built her a house. As the relationship progressed, she got pregnant. The man wanted her to keep it but out of fear of being suspended by her church, she ended the pregnancy—twin boys.

She later got pregnant again and removed another set of twins. Altogether, she terminated six pregnancies for this man, just because of fear of church suspension.

In the end, she separated from the man and went through a series of failed relationships.

Today, she is old and very lonely. The house the man built for her was eventually sold because she fell sick and couldn’t afford medical bills.

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Whenever I go home to visit my mother, she sees me and breaks down crying. She would tell me her story while blaming her church for her predicament. She always says she unalived her children out of fear of the church.

“I wish I had someone to talk sense into me. Someone to remind me that life continues beyond a few hours of church meetings and the possibility of being ostracized,” she would lament.

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Sadly, she only realized this when it was too late. She left the church eventually, but by then, she could not turn back the hands of time. No one from that church even came to check on her afterward.

I feel so sorry for her. In fact, sometimes when I visit my mother, I take another route just to avoid seeing her crying. Hmmm.

—Nana

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