27 September 2016 – Warning that unsafe abortions kill nearly 50,000 women each year, United Nations human rights experts today called on States across the world to repeal restrictive abortion laws and policies, and all punitive measures and discriminatory barriers to access safe reproductive health services.
“Criminalization of abortion and failure to provide adequate access to services for termination of an unwanted pregnancy are forms of discrimination based on sex,” they said in a joint statement on the eve of the Global Day of Action for Access to Safe and Legal Abortion.
“Restrictive legislation which denies access to safe abortion is one of most damaging ways of instrumentalizing women’s bodies and a grave violation of women’s human rights. The consequences for women are severe, with women sometimes paying with their lives” they said.
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Source: United Nations