DATE / 7 OCTOBER 2020
On 28 September, in honour of International Safe Abortion Day, Humanists International co-sponsored a joint statement at the UN on ongoing threats to sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR) in light of COVID-19.
The statement was delivered during the General Debate of the 45th session of the Human Rights Council and was supported and signed by a total of 354 organizations and 643 individuals.
States are ignoring their duties to ensure abortion access during COVID-19
The Independent
September 28, 2020
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Activists are calling for easing of restrictions on dispensing abortion drug mifepristone, as the world commemorates international safe abortion day.
The day is marked on September 28, every year to remind the world of women’s right to access safe and legal abortion. It is based on the fact that more and more women are dying from the lack of access to safe abortion, a public health emergency that, according to activists, has been ignored.
Continued: https://www.independent.co.ug/experts-cautious-as-activists-push-for-access-to-abortion-drug/
by Marge Berer
26 August 2020
Introduction
Telemedicine for abortion care is the use of communications technology to arrange an abortion in a clinical setting or self-managed by the woman at home with medical abortion pills and for follow-up after the abortion. For International Safe Abortion Day, 28 September 2020, in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, the International Campaign for Women’s Right to Safe Abortion (ICWRSA) is promoting the use of telemedicine to arrange and follow-up an abortion and to support women’s right to have an abortion at home in the first trimester of pregnancy with medical abortion pills if she so chooses.
This discussion paper provides a history of how the use of telemedicine
and self-managed abortion with abortion pills at home have developed.
Initially, in Brazil in the 1980s, women shared information about the use of
misoprostol informally. Then, feminist-run safe abortion information hotlines
were set up, starting in 2005, to provide women with the information they need
(and in some cases provide the pills) to have an abortion at home. There are
currently one or more such hotlines in at least 26 countries in all world
regions. More recently, health professionals began to use what is now called
telemedicine (or telehealth) for this same purpose. This paper is about telemedicine
and the conditions that make self-managed abortion safe, and gives examples of
abortion services that put telemedicine and self-managed abortion together. It
also covers the role pharmacies can and are playing in support of these
changes.
Continued: https://mailchi.mp/safeabortionwomensright/newsletter-26-aug-2020?e=372dd34034
INTERNATIONAL SAFE ABORTION DAY 28 September 2019
Abortion is Healthcare: 28 Providers
A newsletter from the International Campaign for Women's Right to Safe Abortion, featuring the stories of 28 abortion providers, in honour of September 28.
FIGO Statement for International Safe Abortion Day
25.09.2019
FIGO (International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics) is celebrating and supporting International Safe Abortion Day on September 28th 2019.
FIGO regards reproductive choice, including access to safe abortion services, as a basic and non-negotiable tool for ensuring the human rights of every woman, not just in one region or country, but globally.
When an abortion is provided by qualified providers in appropriate settings, it is one of the safest medical procedures known to science. But it is unacceptable that each year up to 13 percent of maternal deaths worldwide result from unsafe abortion.
Continued: https://www.figo.org/news/figo-statement-international-safe-abortion-day-0016246
OPEN LETTER to UN Secretary-General António Guterres, Heads of UN agencies & national leaders
RE: International Safe Abortion Day, 28 September 2019
24 September 2019
Dear Secretary-General Guterres, international & national leaders,
We write to you as leaders of the United Nations and its agencies, and through our members to national leaders, to invite you to make a public statement from your own office/agency in support of International Safe Abortion Day, 28 September 2019. We also ask that the United Nations makes it an official UN Day.
International Safe Abortion Day has been celebrated since 1990, initially in Latin America. The date was chosen in commemoration of the abolition of slavery in Brazil. It was declared an international day in 2011. In 2012, events and activities took place in some 50 countries, rising within a few years to 60-65 countries across all continents. A growing number of national leaders and human rights bodies now recognise the day and speak out in support of its goals. Journalists are giving it more media space with every year that passes, drawing prominent national figures into the discussion.
MADAGASCAR: 28 SEPTEMBER REPORT – Nous pouvons éviter que des femmes meurent (We can prevent women dying)
by International Campaign for Women's Right to Safe Abortion
Oct 30, 2018
by Lovatiana Andriamboavonjy, Nifin’akanga, Madagascar
In Madagascar, the Minister of Public Health announced that an estimated 75,000 abortions take place per year in the country, that there is one abortion per ten live births and based on data from East Africa, there are about 575 deaths from complications of unsafe abortion on the Madagascar mainland per year. Complications of unsafe abortion are the second highest cause of maternal deaths registered in the health system, after antenatal and post-partum haemorrhage. In a study at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Gynécologie-Obstétrique Befelatanana in 2012-13, there were 360 cases of complications of unsafe abortion, with a fatality rate of 4.16%. According to another study in this same hospital in 2011-12, the majority of those treated for complications were aged 15-24 years, with the age range being 15-43 years of age. 70% of cases were due to haemorrhage, and 30% due to sepsis. But these data do not reflect the reality outside of hospital clinics, where many women never seek treatment and die of post-abortion complications. These problems are all due to abortions being prohibited in the law, and take place clandestinely, using unsafe, often traditional methods.
International Safe Abortion Day, 28 September
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International Campaign Statement
Normalising Abortion: It’s Part of Our Lives - #LetsTalkAbortion
by Marge Berer, International Coordinator
This year’s theme invites all of us who have something to say about abortion to look inwards, to become aware of the role of abortion in our own lives and in the lives of people we are close to and know. Those of us who have had an abortion have a personal story to tell. Those of us who have not had an abortion, or not yet, undoubtedly know others who have, even if you aren’t aware of it. Perhaps you never asked? Perhaps they have never felt able to tell you, or indeed to tell anyone.
28 EXAMPLES OF PROGRESS & SUCCESSES FOR ABORTION RIGHTS IN 2018
27 September 2018
International Safe Abortion Day, 28 September
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For International Safe Abortion Day this year, we are celebrating the many aspects of progress and success we’ve seen internationally this year. Here is a timeline with 28 examples.
by Nandini Archer and Marge Berer
This year marks the 29th time our movement has celebrated 28 September as an international day for safe abortion. It has been a busy year for abortion rights campaigning, and a good one in many countries. Much of the mainstream media reported on the Irish abortion referendum and the almost successful Argentinian law reform, but action has also been taking place all over the world, inside and outside government, on the streets and in the media, from South Korea to Mexico to the Democratic Republic of Congo. In focusing on the increasingly organised and sometimes violent backlash against women’s rights globally, and the myriad challenges we still face, we sometimes lose sight of the many positive strides forward. This newsletter celebrates them, and all the people who have worked tirelessly to make them possible. We hope they help to energise us all.
The Human Rights Council must condemn attacks on abortion rights defenders
25 September 2018
In support of the September 28 “Global Day of Action for Access to Safe and Legal Abortion”, 223 civil society organizations from around the world have endorsed this joint statement on abortion rights.
The statement was developed by the Sexual Rights Initiative, the Center for Reproductive Rights, Ipas, the Asia-Pacific Resource and Research Centre for Women, the Youth Coalition for Sexual Health and Rights, AWID and the Swedish Association for Sexuality and Education.
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