Attempted abortion : Mother can be charged with Murder, Manslaughter if it kills child given birth to - GIMPA Lecturer

A private legal practitioner and Criminal Law Lecturer at GIMPA has cautioned ladies who attempt to abort pregnancies.

He indicates that per the laws of Ghana, such ladies can be charged with murder or manslaughter if such an attempt rather leads to the death of those persons after being born.

“If you attempt to abort and you fail and you deliver and the child lives for some time and dies as a result of the earlier abortion, the presumption is that, the human being who is now a person has died as a result of the harm you caused to it so they will charge you for murder or manslaughter.”

In an interview with Dennislaw News, Dr. Tuffuor mentioned that in Criminal Law (murder and homicide) cases, a fetus in the womb is not recognized as a person and thus cannot be an object of murder or manslaughter.

“In law when it comes to criminal law murder or homicide cases, we distinguish between human beings and persons. We are only interested in a person. A person means that he is outside the mother’s womb and can live by himself. When you kill that one, they will charge you with murder or manslaughter.”

The Criminal law lecturer however noted that so far, in practice the law is yet to be applied in such an instance in Ghana. 

Background

Section 67 of the Criminal Offences Act, 1960(Act 29) states;

(1) Where harm is caused to a child during the time of its birth, or where, upon the discovery of the concealed body of the child, harm is found to have been caused to it, such harm shall be presumed to have been caused to the child before its death

(2) The time of birth includes the whole period from the commencement of labor until the time when the child so becomes a person that it may be murder or manslaughter to causing its death.