Key Facts about Abortion

July 2, 2022
By INDIAN AWAAZ

Around 73 million induced abortions take place worldwide each year. Six out of 10 (61%) of all unintended pregnancies, and 3 out of 10 (29%) of all pregnancies, end in induced abortion (1).

Comprehensive abortion care is included in the list of essential health care services published by WHO in 2020. Abortion is a simple health care intervention that can be effectively managed by a wide range of health workers using medication or a surgical procedure. In the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, a medical abortion can also be safely self-managed by the pregnant person outside of a health care facility (e.g., at home), in whole or in part. This requires that the woman has access to accurate information, quality medicines and support from a trained health worker (if she needs or wants it during the process).

Continued: https://theindianawaaz.com/key-facts-about-abortion/

02.07.2022

Commentary

Featured

abortion is essential healthcare

essential medicine list

Global Abortion Policies Database

World Health Organization

Fewer Canadian women appear to be travelling to U.S. for abortions during COVID-19

By Amanda Connolly, Global News
Posted May 20, 2021

The number of Canadian women going south of the border to receive medically necessary abortions has dropped during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to data from the Ontario government and a sexual health expert who says her organization has seen a drop.

Over the last five years, dozens of Canadian women primarily from Ontario have been referred each year to doctors and clinics in the United States to receive medically necessary abortions they cannot access at home, which are covered under their provincial health-care plans.

Continued: https://globalnews.ca/news/7868372/coronavirus-covid-pandemic-abortion-access-canada/

20.05.2021

Featured

News

abortion is essential healthcare

Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights

Covid-19 and abortion

Frederique Chabot

later abortions

sexual health care

Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada

travelling for abortion

UK – Pills in the post: how Covid reopened the abortion wars

As some European countries rolled out ‘telemed’ abortion, others shut down access completely.

by Sarah Hurtes and Daniel Boffey
Wed 21 Apr 2021

Kay, 34, realised her period was late a month into Britain’s lockdown. The coronavirus death count was spiralling across the country. Covid-19 was putting the NHS under unprecedented strain and Boris Johnson had given the British people what he described as “a very simple instruction” in an address to the nation from Downing Street: “You must stay at home.”

A worrying, unsettling time, and Kay, a mother of a six-year-old girl, needed to get hold of a pregnancy test kit. She went online and, two days later, took delivery of the test, learning of a positive result via two pink lines. It was the news she had dreaded.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/21/pills-in-the-post-how-covid-reopened-the-abortion-wars

21.04.2021

Commentary

Featured

1967 Abortion Act

abortion is essential healthcare

abortion pills by mail

ACAI

access to abortion during lockdown

Agenda Europe

British Pregnancy Advisory Service

Celia Herrero Medina

Christian Concern

CitizenGO

Covid-19 and abortion

Federation for Women and Family Planning

Fundacja Pro-Prawo do Życia

MSI Reproductive Choices

Royal College of Midwives

self-managed abortion

Spanish abortion clinics association

telemedicine

telemedicine abortion

Supreme Court wipes out lower court rulings in Texas abortion battle

The governor ordered a halt to nonessential medical procedures last year, which the attorney general then said applied to "any type of abortions."

Jan. 25, 2021
By Pete Williams

The Supreme Court handed a victory to advocates of abortion rights Monday, wiping off the books lower court rulings that had upheld a Texas order banning nearly all abortions in the state during the coronavirus pandemic.

Gov. Greg Abbott ordered a halt to nonessential medical procedures in late March to conserve hospital resources and personal protective equipment. Attorney General Ken Paxton then said the order applied to "any type of abortions," including medication abortions that do not involve surgery.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-wipes-out-lower-court-rulings-texas-abortion-battle-n1255549

List abortion as an essential service during Covid-19

This will reduce abortion-related mortality and morbidity.

by DANIEL OTIENO
01 September 2020

According to the World Health Organization, lack of access to safe abortion results in 45 per cent of all abortions globally being unsafe and 13 per cent of maternal mortality worldwide. In addition, WHO has listed reproductive health services, including care during pregnancy and childbirth, as essential services.

However, the challenge lies in ensuring safe abortion care as a component of reproductive health service. The emergence of Covid-19 has further worsened the sexual and reproductive health of women, who may be in danger of pregnancy complications and are therefore at risk of unsafe abortion.

Continued: https://www.the-star.co.ke/opinion/columnists/2020-09-01-list-abortion-as-an-essential-service-during-covid-19/

01.09.2020

abortion is essential healthcare

Covid-19 and abortion

Daniel Otieno

World Health Organization

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

Why COVID-19 Must Not Constrain Access to Abortion in India

Why COVID-19 Must Not Constrain Access to Abortion in India
During the pandemic, India must ensure that access to critical women’s health facilities remain unimpeded.

By Tarini Mehta
June 24, 2020

Some things cannot be stopped and started as we please, not even if a highly contagious virus demands it. A case in point is development through the different stages of pregnancy. The Indian government did declare safe abortion an essential health service on April 14, when the country was still under a COVID-19 lockdown. It brought some relief to a few women who urgently required those facilities. But things are not that simple.

According to a report by the IPAS Development Foundation, a non-profit organization that works to manage unwanted pregnancies in India, 73 percent of abortions that take place in India annually are done via medical abortion (MA) drugs that are accessed outside of facilities. Private health facilities take care of 16 percent of cases, while public health facilities cover another 6 percent. The remaining 5 percent are conducted through traditional methods that are considered unsafe. These include, but are not limited to, the usage of sticks, roots, and herbal medicines.

Continued: https://thediplomat.com/2020/06/why-covid-19-must-not-constrain-access-to-abortion-in-india/

The Inside Story Of How Arkansas Exploited COVID To Stop Abortions

The Inside Story Of How Arkansas Exploited COVID To Stop Abortions
Under pressure by anti-abortion activists ― including a board of health member ― the state health department became a weapon in the war against abortion.

By Melissa Jeltsen, HuffPost US
June 22, 2020

On the first day of April, Marsha Boss, a 68-year-old Catholic pharmacist, uploaded a photo to Facebook. Snapped on a sunny day, it showed the parking lot outside Little Rock Family Planning Services, one of two abortion clinics left in Arkansas. “We watched three cars from Texas come in, three from Tennessee and one from Alabama all coming to our great state to get an abortion,” she wrote in her post. “How sad is that?”

In private, around the same time, Boss was extending her disapproval to state health officials. Over text messages and in phone calls, she complained that the clinic was violating social distancing guidelines, performing “25 to 30” abortions a day, and warned that out-of-town patients ― many of whom were fleeing abortion bans their states put in place after coronavirus hit ― might spread the infectious disease in Arkansas. She also said she saw someone carrying coveted surgical masks into the clinic, as well as beer.

Continued: https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/arkansas-coronavirus-abortion_n_5eeba27ac5b6413b964e4caa?ri18n=true

USA – The Fight to Protect Abortion Access Amid the Pandemic

The Fight to Protect Abortion Access Amid the Pandemic

Jordan Smith
June 15 2020

It wasn’t much past 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning in late April, and anti-choice protesters outside the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the only abortion clinic in Mississippi, were already cantankerous: There were three men with bullhorns, including one on top of a ladder; a 1,200-watt speaker pointing toward the clinic’s front door; and another protester blowing a shofar. “Welcome to the circus,” said Kim Gibson, a clinic escort who works to keep the mayhem away from patients.

Even as the coronavirus pandemic has gripped the nation (new cases are still on the rise in Mississippi), protesters disregarded Jackson’s stay-at-home order and have consistently failed to wear masks or keep appropriate social distance — not only from one another, but also from patients, whose cars they readily approach in an effort to “counsel” them and hand out anti-abortion propaganda.

Continued: https://theintercept.com/2020/06/15/coronavirus-pandemic-abortion-acces

15.06.2020