An unseen crisis: nearly half of all pregnancies worldwide are unintended

by Seema Jalan, United Nations Foundation
MARCH 30, 2022

A new report from UNFPA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency, features a staggering statistic: Nearly half of all pregnancies worldwide are unintended. “For the women affected, the most life-altering reproductive choice — whether or not to become pregnant — is no choice at all,” says UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Natalia Kanem.

UNFPA is sounding the alarm on a human rights crisis that has ramifications for women, societies, and the world in light of its 2022 State of World Population report, Seeing the Unseen: The case for action in the neglected crisis of unintended pregnancy, which estimates there are 121 million unintended pregnancies each year. The report builds on new data from the Guttmacher Institute and the World Health Organization (WHO) that outlines the first-ever estimates of unintended pregnancy and abortion at the country level, highlighting major disparities across 150 countries in access to quality sexual and reproductive health care.

Continued: https://unfoundation.org/blog/post/an-unseen-crisis-nearly-half-of-all-pregnancies-worldwide-are-unintended/

Africa: ‘Let’s Treat Sexual and Reproductive Health Services as a Regular Part of Health Care to Remove Stigma’

11 MARCH 2022
INTERVIEW By Sethi Ncube

Johannesburg — Too many girls and women continue to die and face both the short and long-term repercussions of unsafe abortions, yet potentially life-saving information on receiving quality care for abortion-related complications, remains in short supply.

To address this gap, the UN system for Human Reproduction Research (HRP), the World Health Organization (WHO) and partners, published new data on the issue, in the latest edition of the International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics. The newly published papers also explore the experiences of adolescents and women in accessing support in insecure environments, reports UN News.

Continued: https://allafrica.com/stories/202203110732.html

Activists in Latin America battle to guarantee access to safe abortion in COVID-19 world

By Josefina Salomón & Christopher Alford
7 September 2020

For decades, women human rights defenders across Latin America have been fighting an uphill battle to ensure sexual and reproductive rights, including access to safe abortion, are a reality for all. Over the last five months that battle has turned into a war.

The figures have been shocking for a long time. The COVID-19 pandemic has turned them into a catastrophe, with a potential bleak future.

Continued: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/09/activists-latin-america-access-safe-abortion-covid19/

Protecting women’s health during a pandemic

Médecins Sans Frontières
Posted 21 Aug 2020

“If you think about times of crisis—whether it’s disease, displacement, or conflict—women and girls are often disproportionately affected,” says Eva De Plecker, a midwife and head of the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) working group on reproductive health and sexual violence. MSF teams on the ground are seeing that the COVID-19 pandemic is no exception.

“While we are still learning about COVID-19
and how pregnancy may be affected by the virus,” De Plecker says, “experience
from past epidemics such as Ebola has shown that the shutdown of services
unrelated to the outbreak resulted in more deaths than the disease itself.”

Continued: https://reliefweb.int/report/world/protecting-womens-health-during-pandemic

21.08.2020

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Italy: Covid-19 Exacerbates Obstacles to Legal Abortion

Inadequate Measures Heighten Existing Risks for Health, Lives

July 30, 2020

(London) – Government inaction has left women and girls facing avoidable obstacles to accessing legal abortion in Italy during the Covid-19 pandemic, putting their health and lives at risk, Human Rights Watch said today.

The government’s failure to ensure clear pathways to essential, time-sensitive medical care during the pandemic caused interruptions to abortion services and prevented some women from accessing abortion within the legal time limit, exacerbating longstanding barriers to safe and legal abortion in Italy.

Continued: https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/07/30/italy-covid-19-exacerbates-obstacles-legal-abortion

South Africa: Providing safe abortion care during a national lockdown

03 July 2020
Kgaladi Mphahlele, Doctors Without Borders

In 2015, MSF surveyed 800 women between the ages of 18 and 49 in Rustenburg and found that one in four women had been raped in her lifetime, yet fewer than 5 per cent of those women reported to a health care facility. Since then, MSF has run several sexual and reproductive health programs for the community— including for survivors of sexual violence— across Bojanala district, where Rustenburg is located, in partnership with local health authorities.

In addition to community outreach and health
education in more than 20 schools in the district, MSF supports four Kgomotso
Care Centers (KCC) providing sexual violence care.

Continued: https://www.msf.org.za/stories-news/fieldworker-stories/south-africa-providing-safe-abortion-care-during-national-lockdown

Strong words and action needed to protect women’s lives during this pandemic

Jul 2, 2020
By Avril Benoît, executive director for Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières in the United States (MSF-USA)

As world leaders attempt to tackle an unprecedented number of humanitarian crises, many of them deepened beyond imagination by the coronavirus pandemic, the United States is throwing its weight around on the global stage to obstruct lifesaving aid efforts.

The Trump Administration appears intent on blocking international efforts and resolutions containing these critically important words: sexual and reproductive health.

Continued: https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/what-we-do/news-stories/news/strong-words-and-action-needed-protect-womens-lives-during-pandemic