In Nigeria, abortion is totally prohibited except when aimed at saving the life of the woman. Many women resort to non-physician providers to procure abortion secretly in the bid to avoid reluctant parenthood. These procedures are unhygienic and unsafe. Even abortions by some physician providers result in complications. Studies reveal an unacceptable high rate of maternal mortality and morbidity in Nigeria due substantially to these unsafe abortions, among other contributory factors. Therefore, there is urgent need to take fresh look at abortion laws in order to figure out their deficiencies vis-à-vis current national and international realities. This will assist in identifying policy avenues that would assist women in avoiding unwarranted complication-and-death paths. In reality, abortions take place in large numbers but under secretive stealth. In essence, the laws have not deterred users from accessing abortions, rather the aftermaths of this benign circumvention are telling on reproductive and sexual health of users. My analysis undertakes a close-contextual examination of the prohibitive provisions, pointing out that the couching of some of the prohibitions are not in line with trite principles of criminal law. The analysis unfolds the heuristic discretionary potentials of the Bourne case, which the Nigerian medical community could creatively utilize to women’s advantage. The paper calls for fundamental rethinking of the prohibitive provisions. Fortunately, towards the completion of this paper, a Bill was introduced in the Nigerian National Assembly, which has the concomitant effect of amending the present abortion laws. The balance of this interplay is reflected in an addendum.