Joan Baez and her production team were in a good position to find out more about this song at the time she recorded it, but apparently they were not enough interested in the women of Ghana to do it.

It's a great tune, it's sold, and it's brought her publicity, and that seems to be all she was interested in.

For example, they could have asked what the heck "the tortoise boy no mon ami" meant. Is it even in the right language?

As for authorship, I wouldn't be surprised if the African person who composed it wished to keep a low profile. It's definitely a feminist song in a continent that gives short shrift to females. Oh, the author probably wouldn't have been imprisoned or executed, but could have been shunned, beaten, or ridiculed. I'm not surprised we can't find out who really wrote it.

As for the meaning of the song, it's obvious the woman is giving birth, almost certainly to her third child. (make me lie on a sofa; make me have-a a me labor) Whether the pregnancies are the result of marriage, promiscuity or prostitution is unimportant. The fact is that childbirth in such a dirty, casual way (on a sofa!) is dangerous. And having too many children will ultimately kill a woman, one way or another.

Listen with your heart. Somebody was trying to sing about great wrongs that we aren't supposed to talk about.