January 8, 2015

News |

Safe abortion campaign airs on radio and television in India

Abortion is legal in India yet despite that, one woman in India dies due to abortion-related complications every two hours. To raise awareness, the government of India has launched India’s first ever mass media campaign on making abortion safer; now live on close to 30 popular news and entertainment television channels and several radio stations across the
country. The media campaign is part of a broad initiative to ensure access to safe and legal abortion in India.

For viewers who don’t speak Hindi, the story revolves around a couple that has had a safe and early legal abortion the day before. They assure a concerned relative (sister-in-law) that they followed the advice of a health provider, sought the abortion in an approved clinic and were home in a few hours—with little pain, the woman adds. Another woman (mother-in-law) approvingly says they made a timely decision and went to right place; thus normalizing abortion in the context of family structures in India by projecting it as a topic of conversation that does not require secrecy.

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