The decriminalisation of abortion in Colombia as cautionary tale. Social movements, numbers and socio-technical struggles in the promotion of health as a right
Emily E. Vasquez, Amaya Perez-Brume, Richard G. Parker in Social Inequities and Contemporary Struggles for Collective Health in Latin America, 2020
An understanding of abortion in terms of public health was key in the Constitutional Court’s discussions. The ruling is full of references to the burden of illegal abortion in terms of women’s mortality and morbidity. In many cases the sources of the figures are not quoted. However the main source of data about abortion in Colombia, at the time of the debate, was the study developed by the AGI (2006) about unsafe abortion. In other articles (Maldonado, 2014) I have shown the impact of this study in influencing court decisions by presenting the citation network that supports judges’ reasoning and argumentation. The Guttmacher study is assumed by the court to be evidence of the public health character of abortion in the country.
Hard Cases for Critics of Abortion
Christopher Kaczor in The Ethics of Abortion, 2023
A related argument is that abortion should be legal or ethically permitted in order to defend the health of women who might die from illegal abortion. One of the founders of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), Bernard Nathanson wrote,How many deaths were we talking about when abortion was illegal? In NARAL we generally emphasized the drama of the individual case, not the mass statistics, but when we spoke of the latter it was always “5,000 to 10,000 deaths a year.” I confess that I knew the figures were totally false, and I suppose the others did too if they stopped to think of it. But in the “morality” of our revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics?(1979, p. 193)
Saving mothers’ lives: the contribution of the Confidential Enquiries into Maternal Deaths to improving maternal health in the UK
Daryl Dob, Griselda Cooper, Anita Holdcroft, Philip Steer, Gwyneth Lewis in Crises in Childbirth Why Mothers Survive, 2018
The first Report described 153 deaths resulting from ‘abortion’, of which at least 108 had been procured illegally.4 Around 30 deaths per year due to illegal abortion continued to occur through the rest of the 1950s and the 1960s. Although the first Report was neutral on this issue, the figures themselves had a major effect on the parliamentary debate, and were used to support the introduction of the enabling legislation. During the full first working year of the Abortion Act in 1969, the number of deaths due to illegal abortion fell to 17 and declined thereafter. Several further years passed before there were no deaths due to illegal abortion, demonstrating that legislative changes may take time to deliver benefits in both the availability of services and public awareness.
Post-Abortion Contraceptive Use Among Girls and Women in Ghana
Published in Women's Reproductive Health, 2023
D. Yaw Atiglo, Adriana A. E. Biney
There were three main predictor variables in the study. The first, safety of abortion method, is a composite variable measuring the safety of the most recent abortion. It comprises three variables: (1) the place the abortion was undertaken—those undertaken in government and private hospitals, health centers, clinics, and maternity homes are safe (coded as 1) and everywhere else unsafe (coded as 0); (2) the person performing the abortion—doctors, midwives, and nurses are safe (coded as 1) and everyone else is unsafe (coded as 0); and (3) the last action used to terminate pregnancy—this includes use of surgical methods (dilation and curettage, dilation and evacuation, vacuum aspiration, injection in abdomen, catheter, other injection) and medical methods (Cytotec tablets, mifepristone + misoprostol, and oxytocin) which are safe (coded as 1); any other methods are unsafe (coded as 0) (Sundaram et al., 2012). Respondents reporting a safe place, a safe person, and a safe last action were coded as safe; all else were coded as unsafe. This is in line with the definition of an unsafe abortion as entailing the termination of a pregnancy in a location that does not meet the most “minimal medical” requirements or a termination conducted by a person who does not have the skills and certification to do so, or both (Grimes et al., 2006).
Framings of abortion in Pacific Island print media: qualitative analysis of articles, opinion pieces, and letters to the editor
Published in Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, 2023
Kate Burry, Kristen Beek, Heather Worth, Lisa Vallely, Bridget Haire
Abortion is significantly restricted by law in the Pacific Island countries included in this study: Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Fiji, Samoa, Cook Islands, and Tonga. These restrictions have profound implications for lives and health of those capable of pregnancy.1–3 Those seeking, providing, or assisting others in accessing abortions in these countries may be penalised, impacting the abortion seeker as well as the ability of health care providers, advocates, and other support people to provide adequate reproductive health care.4,5 Sanctions in these countries for providers and abortion seekers range from two years to life imprisonment, and three to seven years of imprisonment for those who assist people to secure an abortion.4,5 Countries that have restrictive abortion laws have higher numbers of pregnant people accessing unsafe abortion, with risks of severe and sometimes permanent morbidity and mortality; undertaking expensive and burdensome journeys to access abortion services in more liberal jurisdictions; or illegally accessing the drug misoprostol to terminate their pregnancies, sometimes with inaccurate guidance on the safe use of the drug.2,3,6,7 However, for people on the isolated island groups of the Pacific, the option of travelling to adjacent countries for abortion services is often economically, practically, and geographically constrained, leaving them with even fewer choices.
The association between intimate partner violence and self-managed abortion: a cross-sectional study among women in urban Bangladesh
Published in Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, 2022
Bonnie Crouthamel, Anvita Dixit, Erin Pearson, Jamie Menzel, Dipika Paul, Mohammad Abdul Hannan Shakhider, Jay Silverman, Sarah Averbach
Worldwide, unsafe abortion is a leading cause of maternal mortality, and deaths disproportionately occur where abortion is restricted.1 Abortion is illegal in Bangladesh except to save a woman's life. Menstrual regulation (MR), however, has been available since 1979.2 MR in Bangladesh involves the use of either uterine aspiration or medications (misoprostol with or without mifepristone) to induce menstruation without using any testing to definitively diagnose a pregnancy. MR can be provided up to 12 weeks from the last menstrual period by doctors and 10 weeks by advanced practice clinicians and nurses.2 Menstrual regulation is permitted by the government. Safe MR services are offered within both governmental and private health facilities.2
Related Knowledge Centers
- Pregnancy
- Self-Induced Abortion
- Abortion
- Post-Abortion Care
- Maternal Death
- Birth Control
- Sepsis
- Pandemic
- Public Health
- Women'S Health