Ipas > Ipas researchers contribute to journal with special focus on abortion

Ipas researchers contribute to journal with special focus on abortion

June 30, 2005

Abortion-related research plays a critical role in fostering dialogue on unsafe abortion and facilitating evidence-based improvements in programs and policies.

The November 2004 issue of the journal Reproductive Health Matters, released in April 2005, features a special focus on “Abortion Law, Policy and Practice in Transition.” Released twice annually, Reproductive Health Matters examines reproductive-health issues from a woman-centered perspective through articles written by and for women's health advocates, researchers, service providers and policymakers. Its goal is to promote policy, research and health-care services that enhance reproductive health and promote women's reproductive rights.

International reproductive-health research focuses relatively little attention on abortion. Abortion-related research, however, plays a critical role in fostering dialogue on unsafe abortion and facilitating evidence-based improvements in programs and policies. As an organization with a comprehensive mission to reduce abortion-related deaths and advance women's reproductive rights, Ipas has a strong commitment to filling the gap with innovative research complemented by timely policy and programmatic actions. Reproductive Health Matters demonstrates similar leadership in highlighting this topic that, though considered by some to be a controversial issue, nevertheless has enormous consequences for women's health.

Ipas researchers and policy specialists contributed significantly to this issue of Reproductive Health Matters, providing six articles on health policy and practice in Nicaragua, Vietnam, Romania, Mozambique, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa.

In countries that allow only limited indications for legal abortion, doctors are called upon to be the arbiters of when an abortion is a medically-necessary procedure or an illegal act. In “Should Doctors Be the Judges? Ambiguous Policies on Legal Abortion in Nicaragua,” Ipas staff Ellen MH Mitchell and Marta Maria Blandon, and consultant Heathe Luz McNaughton examine how this legal approach results in highly inconsistent access to legal health services.
“Misoprostol Alone for Early Medical Abortion in a Latin American Clinic Setting,” by Deborah L. Billings from Ipas and anonymous coauthors, records the experience of a clinic in a Latin American country where abortion is legally restricted. The findings show that misoprostol is an effective option for women, as well as illustrating the importance of clinic staff trained in its use where access to safe abortion services is limited.
Surgical abortion has been legally available in Vietnam for a variety of indications for more than a decade. Recently, the Ministry of Health endorsed introducing medication abortion to expand patient options. In their article, “From Research to Reality: The Challenges of Introducing Medical Abortion into Service Delivery in Vietnam,” Ipas staff Bela Ganatra and Phan Bich Thuy, along with colleagues Marc Bygdeman from Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden, Nguyen Duc Vinh of the Vietnamese Ministry of Health and Vu Manh Loi of the Institute of Technology, reported on the potential of Vietnam 's health system to adapt to providing medication abortion in addition to surgical abortion in the country's hospitals and clinics.
In “A Strategic Assessment of Abortion and Contraception in Romania,” researchers Brooke R. Johnson, formerly of Ipas, Mihai Horga of the Romanian East European Institute of Reproductive Health and Peter Fajans of the World Health Organization show how applying a Ministry of Health-led, participatory approach to assessing fertility regulation can inform and mobilize stakeholders to take actions to reduce unwanted pregnancy and improve access to and the quality of abortion-care services.
In “An Assessment of Abortion Services in Public Health Facilities in Mozambique: Women's and Providers' Perspectives,” Ipas researchers Maria Gallo and Hailemichael Gebreselassie, along with colleagues Maria Teresa A. Victorino of the Mozambique Family Health Division and Martinho Dgedge, Lilia Jamisse and Cassimo Bique from the Mozambique Ministry of Health, assessed abortion services in Mozambique, comparing women's and providers' perspectives.
Finally, Eunice Brookman-Amissah and Josephine Banda Moyo of the Ipas Africa Alliance mapped the landscape of abortion policy in Africa in “Abortion Law Reform in Sub-Saharan Africa: No Turning Back.” In their article, the authors examine the roots of abortion laws in Africa, generally inherited from colonial governments, and the trend toward expanded legal indications for abortion.

For more information, contact:
Kirsten Sherk
Senior Associate, Media Relations
e-mail: sherkk@ipas.org
phone: 919.960.5612
fax: 919.929.0258