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It is time for accountability and for concerted action. Millions of women in Brazil and throughout Latin America have already been living with constrained choices regarding their reproductive lives—Zika has further aggravated their situations.

Contraception is an essential element of high-quality abortion care. However, women seeking abortion often leave health facilities without receiving contraceptive counselling or methods, increasing their risk of unintended pregnancy. This paper describes contraceptive uptake in 319,385 women seeking abortion in 2,326 public-sector health facilities in eight African and Asian countries. Ministries of Health integrated contraceptive and abortion services, with technical assistance from Ipas. Overall, postabortion contraceptive uptake was 73 percent. The findings demonstrate high contraceptive uptake when it is delivered at the time of the abortion, a wide range of contraceptive commodities is available, and ongoing monitoring of services occurs.

The presence of religious conservatives with an anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-trans agenda at the OAS is not new. But it is of increasing concern as they continue agitating to dismantle human rights while scenes of unprecedented violence play out across the world…As Orlando demonstrates, any setback to human rights, as designed by these groups, will only lead to more violence.

This study compared levels of abortion stigma in regions with high and low incidence of unsafe abortion in Kenya to explore whether abortion-related stigma is associated with incidence of unsafe abortion. Respondents from a county with higher incidence of unsafe abortion reported higher stigma scores. Age, marital status, type of abortion service, and socioeconomic status were all significantly associated with stigmatizing attitudes.

This study sought to explore abortion-related stigma at the community level as a barrier to women realizing their right to a safe, legal abortion. It found that abortion-related stigma plays a major role in a woman’s decision on whether to have a safe or unsafe abortion. Young unmarried women, in particular, bore the brunt of being stigmatized.

The reality is that 42 million women around the world have abortions each year regardless of any politician’s religious beliefs or “moderated” position on abortion.

Part of breaking the stigma is removing the silence and we are doing it loudly and clearly. By talking about abortion stigma we can recognize how it is created and perpetuated and what our individual roles and responsibilities are in working toward stigma-free language, concepts, and services.

Available Here Search Results In December 2012, Ipas hosted a meeting—“In Women’s Hands: Increasing Access to Medical Abortion Drugs and Information through Pharmacies and Drug Sellers”—in Nairobi, Kenya, that brought together 66 participants from 11 c …

Harm reduction is an evidence-based public health and human rights framework that prioritizes strategies to reduce harm and preserve health in situations where policies and practices prohibit, stigmatize and drive common human activities underground. T …

Available Here Search Results Elaborados después de una  investigación realizada con jóvenes en la Ciudad de México y en Tlaxcala, Atrévete a pensar diferente es una serie de tres historietas —Embarazo, Anticonceptivos, y Relaciones afectivas—que ofrec …

The importance of South Africa as a model for reproductive self-determination in Africa cannot be underestimated. Abortion has been legal since 1996, and the country has some of the most developed government systems for the provision of abortion care on the continent. Yet in the same way opponents of abortion in the United States have whittled away at access with increased bureaucracy, South Africa faces similar assaults that leave women without safe care and threaten to turn back achievements made during the past 16 years. This article explores the history of the law, subsequent legal challenges, and new threats to women’s access to abortion services, including service delivery issues that may influence the future of public health in the country.

Every day of every week several state legislatures are hard at work creating more and more restrictions to punish both women in need of abortion and the medical professionals providing safe abortion care. What do all of these actions across the country share? They’re all rooted in abortion stigma.

The stigma that often surrounds abortion and anyone associated with it—women, providers, pharmacists and advocates—contributes to abortion’s social, medical and legal marginalization. At Ipas, we know that stigmatizing abortion is inherently harmful to women’s health — preventing them from getting the care they deserve.

Search Results Global progress to reduce maternal deaths from unsafe abortion is inadequate. Clarifying abortion values and attitudes, using updated WHO safe abortion technical guidance, networking with other providers, and securing adequate abortion a …

More than half the population supports gay marriage and families. So when will abortion and women’s rights to reproductive self-determination be a cultural norm?

This study evaluates the implementation of misoprostol for postabortion care (MPAC) in two African countries, Kenya and Uganda. The Ministries of Health, local health centers and hospitals, and NGO staff developed evidence-based service delivery protocols to introduce MPAC in selected facilities; implementation extended from January 2009 to October 2010. RESULTS: In both countries, MPAC was easy to use, and freed up provider time and health facility resources traditionally necessary for provision of PAC with uterine aspiration. On-going support of providers following training ensured high quality of care. Providers perceived that many women preferred MPAC, as they avoided instrumentation of the uterus, hospital admission, cost, and stigma associated with abortion.

This paper reports results from a nationally representative health facility study conducted in Ethiopia in 2008. It provides the first national snapshot to measure changes in a dynamic abortion care environment.

Blog post contributed by Dr. Osur to the Women Deliver website in preparation for the 2013 conference in Kuala Lumpur. Ipas is a sponsor of Women Deliver.

Beatriz, a 22-year-old Salvadoran mother with lupus and kidney failure, is pregnant with an anencephalic fetus but continues to be denied a therapeutic abortion by the restrictive law in her country.

Esta publicación es un resumen de la norma y protocolo del Ministerio de Salud de Nicaragua sobre la violencia intrafamiliar y la violencia sexual, con un enfoque en el Protocolo para la Prevención, Detección, y Atención de la Violencia Sexual.