On International Day of Action for Women’s Health, Ipas urges greater attention to women’s reproductive-health needs

Ensuring access to comprehensive reproductive-health information and services is critical to protecting women’s health and rights.

Photo courtesy of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

On this International Day of Action for Women’s Health, Ipas joins with women’s health advocates worldwide in calling for greater attention to critical women’s health issues, including the global – and preventable – problem of unsafe abortion.

Through activities ranging from participating in an information fair in Mexico City to hosting workshops on maternal mortality in Central America, Ipas staff and colleagues aim to increase public and policymakers’ awareness that nearly 70,000 women die from unsafe abortion every year. According to the World Health Organization, the overwhelming majority of these deaths – and countless related injuries – occur in poor countries. Improving access to comprehensive sexual- and reproductive-health information and services, including modern contraceptives and safe, legal abortion, could prevent many of these personal and public tragedies.

"Women's health is an unfinished agenda," said Nadine Gasman, Country Director of Ipas Mexico.  "Our societies owe an enormous debt to women, especially poor, marginalized and indigenous women, which will never be settled until all women can safely exercise their sexual and reproductive rights and can access high-quality services, including safe abortion." 

Actions required by governments and others, Gasman added, include developing more gender-sensitive policies, increasing budget allocations specifically for women’s sexual and reproductive health, and improving the quality of health services.

Since 1987, women’s health and rights activists around the world have observed May 28 as the International Day of Action for Women’s Health, in a variety of ways. Ipas’s observance this year includes:

• Co-hosting, with the feminist group Colectivo 8 de Marzo, a workshop in Matagalpa, Nicaragua, on causes of causes of pregnancy-related deaths
• Working with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to organize another workshop in Central America on similar themes

• With the Nicaraguan police force, hosting an interdisciplinary forum for the National University’s medical and nursing schools, which will highlight the story of Rosa, an 8-year-old Nicaraguan girl who became the focal point of international debate about abortion rights after she was raped and then denied an abortion while living with her migrant parents in Costa Rica
• Participating with a number of other organizations in the release of “La Historia de una Rosa,” a new book about Rosa’s story
• Participating in an exhibit sponsored by Women’s Institute of the Federal District in Mexico City
• Also in Mexico City, conducting a panel discussion and presenting a model of care for women victims of violence at a forum on violence against women organized by the National Committee for Safe Motherhood
• Co-sponsoring a conference in Brazil titled “Public Policies for Women’s Health: Experiences in Latin America and the Caribbean”, at which Brazilian Minister of Health Humberto Costa will launch the country’s new national policy for comprehensive care for women’s health

Abortion and women’s rights are especially important elements of the agenda for this year’s Day of Action because this year marks the 10 th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), which took place in Cairo in 1994. At that conference, the international community recognized unsafe abortion as a major public-health issue and emphasized the importance of preventing unsafe abortion by increasing the availability of family-planning services and ensuring that where abortion is legal, it is safe. This year, Ipas and other women’s-health advocates are calling governments to reaffirm their commitments to the Cairo agenda.

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