Ipas supports the right of each woman to control her own sexuality, fertility, health and well-being. To enable women to make these personal decisions, Ipas works with advocates and policymakers around the world to implement laws and policies that support that right.
Where laws restrict termination of pregnancy or where services are limited, women often risk their lives to end unwanted pregnancies. On average, 46 million times a year, women decide they cannot continue their pregnancies and seek abortions. An estimated 19 million of those abortions are unsafe, resulting in approximately 67,000 deaths every year — over half a million women have died in the last decade alone, and millions more have been injured.
Approximately 95 percent of unsafe abortions take place in developing countries where family-planning information and services are limited, and where women often face economic, social, cultural and geographic barriers to reproductive health care.
Women of means can usually terminate a pregnancy safely, regardless of the legal status of abortion. Thus, the crisis of unsafe abortion disproportionately harms women with the least access to resources, including poor women, adolescents, refugees, women living in rural areas and those who are otherwise marginalized.
Despite international commitments to protect reproductive health and rights, women’s ability to determine their futures and exercise their fundamental rights is far from assured. As long as women continue to experience unwanted pregnancies, governments, health systems, advocates and communities must work to increase access to safe and legal abortion services as an essential element of women’s health care.
- advocating for local, national and international policies that support each woman’s ability to make safe reproductive choices
- supporting efforts of local partners to improve or implement laws governing women’s access to safe abortion care
- addressing neglected women's rights issues and the rights of marginalized populations, such as women who are subject to sexual violence, adolescent women and women living with HIV/AIDS
- developing and disseminating information on sexual and reproductive rights to mobilize policymakers, health-care providers, advocates, NGOs and communities
- educating healthcare providers about the importance of providing safe abortion services as a matter of public health and human rights
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