Building evidence to expand abortion access

Explore key research by topic

Laws, policies & financing

Our research helps inform strategies for expanding legal abortion access, public financing for abortion care, public policies that support bodily autonomy and strategies to counter the anti-rights movement. Studies include:

• Domestication of the Maputo Protocol in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Leveraging regional human rights commitments for abortion decriminalization and access (International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics)
• Knowledge of abortion legality among health facility staff in Ghana (PLOS One)

Agency & social norms

Our research seeks to understand individual autonomy and the factors like stigma and community norms that can hinder or help a person to access needed reproductive health care. Our studies also evaluate interventions to expand people’s autonomy when it comes to seeking abortion and other stigmatized care. Studies include:

• What would a world free from abortion stigma look like? (Research review)
• Voices on choice: Exploring public opinion and attitudes on abortion in India

Access, availability, quality & acceptability of care

Our research helps identify what makes abortion services available, trustworthy, and high-quality—especially in low-resource or crisis settings. Studies include:

• Medical abortion in Ghana: A non-randomized, non-inferiority study of access through pharmacies compared with clinics (Contraception)
• Effectiveness and safety of medication abortion via telemedicine versus in-person: A cohort of pregnant people in Colombia (Contraception)
• New study shows: Respectful care + efficient referrals = safer abortion in Uganda (Frontiers in Reproductive Health)

Impacts of climate change on sexual and reproductive health

Our research is leading the way to show how climate change harms sexual and reproductive health—and how all climate change adaptation plans must include a focus on reproductive justice. Studies include:

• Building the evidence: An overview of Ipas findings
• Climate resilience can’t be achieved without addressing sexual and reproductive health and rights, new study shows
• The climate crisis and women’s reproductive health: A call for collaboration
• Climate change and its silent impact on sexual and reproductive health in Nepal (Journal of the Nepal Health Research Council)

Humanitarian settings

Our research proves the tremendous need for abortion access—and a wide range of sexual and reproductive health services—in humanitarian settings, while also evaluating the effectiveness of interventions in these settings. Studies include:

• Study by Ipas and partners identifies ways to help women and girls in humanitarian settings gain control over their reproductive health
• The evidence is growing: Abortion care is a necessity in humanitarian settings

Sexual and gender-based violence

Our research helps document the conditions under which women and girls experience increased risk of sexual and gender-based violence—and findings also inform specially tailored care for survivors of sexual violence. Studies include:

• Study by Ipas and partners identifies ways to help women and girls in humanitarian settings gain control over their reproductive health

Abortion with pills

Our research helps show the efficacy and safety of self-managed abortion with pills and documents the impact of interventions aiming to strengthen people’s access to abortion with pills. Studies include:

• More people in India are choosing self-managed abortion with pills—and it’s safe (Global Public Health)
• Ethiopia pilot program shows private pharmacies can safely provide abortion with pills (Frontiers in Global Women’s Health)
• Abortion with pills in Kinshasa: What mystery clients learned about access and information (Healthcare (MDPI))