Paper urges global leaders to drop neutral stance on access to safe abortion

When women can control their own fertility, they’re better able to capitalize on opportunities for jobs, schooling and civic participation.

Photo courtesy of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

Time and time again, international agreements have recognized unsafe abortion as a global public health problem. But declarations mean little to the third of the world’s population living in countries that severely restrict abortion.

In a new paper prepared at the invitation of the United Nations Millennium Project,  Ipas Executive Vice President Barbara Crane and Policy Director Charlotte Hord Smith say it’s time for the international community to join with governments in making wholehearted efforts to reduce unsafe abortion  — if they’re committed to meeting the United Nations’ ambitious goals by the year 2015.

The paper, “Access to Safe Abortion: An Essential Strategy for Achieving the Millennium Development Goals to Improve Maternal Health, Promote Gender Equality, and Reduce Poverty,” is a background paper to the U.N. Millennium Project report “Public Choices, Private Decisions: Sexual and Reproductive Health and the Millennium Development Goals.”

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), formulated in 2000, include cutting maternal deaths by 75 percent and halving the number of people living on less than $1 per day. All 191 U.N. member states have pledged to meet these goals.

These targets have profound implications for women, whose access to reproductive health care often determines the path their lives will take.

Crane and Hord Smith write: “ … Women who can regulate their fertility, including access to safe abortion, can take advantage of opportunities for education, employment and political empowerment, and have a greater ability to achieve and maintain overall health and well-being as well as to maintain their productivity and contributions to society.”

Poorer women often can’t obtain health services, and with few options to prevent pregnancy, they’re likely to become one of the 68,000 women who, according to the World Health Organization, die annually from unsafe abortions.

And, as Crane and Hord Smith point out, the death toll is growing. More than a half million women will die by the Millennium Development Goal deadline of 2015 if steps are not taken to ensure widespread contraceptive availability, sexuality education and safe abortion services.

But in regards to safe abortion care, the community of nations observes an “uneasy compromise.” For example, even as the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development Programme of Action established safe abortion as a “major public health concern,” it said that abortion should be safe where legal, effectively providing an escape clause for nations that ban or limit abortion.

Crane and Hord Smith say that “it is not ethically justifiable for leaders in the international community to continue to maintain such a neutral position on abortion laws and policies” — for the effects of restrictive laws are anything but neutral. They result in large numbers of maternal deaths or injuries, particularly among the low-income, youth, survivors of sexual assault and the marginalized.

The alternative is clear, say authors Crane and Hord Smith.

“Many countries have laws in place that respect a woman’s right to decide voluntarily whether to continue or terminate a pregnancy, according to her own moral principles, with minimal restrictions. … Not only are such laws preferable from a pragmatic and health standpoint, but in accordance with principles of women’s human rights, governments have a duty to put such laws in place and take steps to ensure that the laws are fully implemented.”

The paper recommends that international leaders promote dialogue on restrictive abortion laws’ effects; advocate for review of every country’s abortion situation; and push for national-level policy change and revision of abortion-related language in international agreements.

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