Can She make her safe choice in times of Covid-19?
14 April 2020
Author: Saskia Hüsken | Function: Senior Technical Advisor
In early March, as we marked International Women’s Day and SheDecides Day, with various marches and community outreach activities for women’s rights, the Covid-19 virus started to spread across the world. Now that infection rates are soaring, death figures are rising in Asia, Europe, and the US, an increasing number of countries, also in Africa, are now in complete or partial lock-down. The need to protect women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) and their access to safe abortion services becomes more dire than ever. Not only is abortion regularly marked as "non-essential", for example in several states in the US, but the pressure on service providers worldwide is severely increased due to the Covid-19 crisis.
Since mid-2018, Rutgers is implementing the programme She Makes Her Safe Choice, funded by the Dreamfund of the Nationale Postcode Loterij and in partnership with DKT International and several other partners. The programme applies a multi-component approach and works to prevent unsafe abortions in different geographic locations and at various levels, with complementary activities on Supply, Demand, and Support. While it is early days and everyone is struggling how to deal with the Covid-19 crisis, it is clear that also for the She Makes Her Safe Choice programme, impacts will be felt and the reality on the ground will forever be changed.
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