Each year, thousands of young women from across Myanmar migrate to the sprawling Hlaingtharyar industrial zone in Yangon to take factory jobs. But the area has become a hot spot for unsafe abortion. Many of the young workers have little or no knowledge about sexual and reproductive health and rights, putting them on a pathway to unintended pregnancies and abortion by unsafe methods.
It’s been nearly a year since the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a global pandemic—a crisis that has disrupted the lives and educations of millions of school-aged children. Even before the pandemic, an estimated 263 million children were not in school, a number that undoubtedly has grown due to school closures to slow the spread of the virus.
Cuando es efectuado por prestadores de servicios capacitados, el aborto es un procedimiento seguro y común, legal bajo por lo menos una causal en casi todos los países del mundo. Sin embargo, las mujeres y niñas que viven en entornos humanitarios a menudo no pueden obtener este servicio esencial de salud reproductiva, aun cuando está a la disposición de otras mujeres en un país que alberga a refugiados.
Kizza Blair is a fourth-year medical student in Uganda and a member of Medical Students for Choice. In this Q&A, we ask him about the value of safe abortion care and the impact of the Helms Amendment, a U.S. law that restricts U.S. foreign assistance funding for abortion services and disproportionately affects Black and brown women in low- and middle-income countries.