This fact sheet highlights the disproportionately high impact of criminal abortion laws on young women. In places where abortion is a crime, women who are young, poor, uneducated and facing an unwanted pregnancy are at greater risk of resorting to illegal and unsafe abortions, and consequently being investigated, arrested and prosecuted.
Topic: Youth
Young Women and Abortion: Avoiding Legal and Policy Barriers
This resource is designed to help advocates and policymakers promote laws and policies that support access to safe abortion for young women. Parental involvement requirements in law or policy are common barriers that push young women toward illegal and often unsafe abortion.
Sexual violence and unwanted pregnancy: Protecting the human rights of adolescent girls and young women
This publication provides evidence and explanation for why Ipas urges governments and policymakers to ensure that all young women—including survivors of sexual violence—have access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care, including safe abortion services.
Abortion attitude transformation: Values clarification activities adapted for young women
This publication supplements Abortion care for young women: A training toolkit (Ipas, 2013). It modifies six values clarification and attitude transformation activities to focus specifically on young women and abortion.
Youth act for safe abortion: A training guide for future health professionals
This guide is a resource for future health professionals who want to learn about and engage in abortion issues. Abortion is a critical but often neglected area of women’s rights, women’s health and health science education. The guide was developed for health sciences students—including students in medicine, nursing, midwifery, pharmacology, public health and other related fields—and can be adapted for other audiences too.
Most medical students want training in abortion care—but schools don’t provide it
This factsheet shares findings from a study conducted by Ipas and the International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations (IFMSA) that finds abortion content is limited or missing in most medical schools in the world.
The full story: Advocating for comprehensive sexuality education that includes abortion
This toolkit is intended for advocates interested in supporting the integration of abortion into comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) programs. It covers key considerations for undertaking advocacy for CSE, plus tools to support advocates in developing a strategy and planning activities that respond to their national context.
Investing in young leaders in sexual and reproductive health
This brochure provides an overview of Ipas Ghana’s successful approach to working with young people on issues of sexual and reproductive health.
Abortion care for young women: A training toolkit
This publication supplements Abortion care for young women: A training toolkit. It modifies six values clarification and attitude transformation activities to focus specifically on young women and abortion.
Youth-friendly postabortion care supplemental training module
In 2006, the Youth-Friendly Task Force published technical guidance on youth-friendly postabortion care (YFPAC) with recommendations to improve the quality of and access to PAC services for adolescents. To complement the technical guidance on YFPAC and support the implementation of YFPAC, the PAC Consortium has developed this supplemental training module to train health care providers to provide YFPAC services to adolescents.
Community Voices: Strategies to address unsafe abortion
This booklet describes Ipas’s community work with vivid stories and narrative from Ipas staff and partners in the field—from Ethiopia to Mexico.
Advocacy for access to safe legal abortion: Similarities in the impact of abortion’s illegality on women’s health and health care in Pernambuco, Bahia, Paraíba, Mato Grosso do Sul e Rio de Janeiro
This document gives a summary analysis of primary and secondary data documenting unsafe abortion and the impact of the criminalization of abortion on women’s lives and health and on health services in 5 Brazilian states: Mato Grosso do Sul, Rio de Janeiro, Bahía, Pernambuco, and Paraíba.
Abortion care for young women: Exploring abortion – A collection of self-reflection and sensitization activities for global audiences
This collection contains five independent self-reflection and sensitization activities on abortion, some of which have been adapted from widely used sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) exercises. They are effective in helping young people reflect on their abortion-related feelings and experiences, as well as in preparing young audiences for further discussions, values clarification, and skills-building related to abortion. Each activity description includes information about objectives, materials needed, timeline and advance preparations. This publication accompanies Abortion care for young women: A training toolkit (ACYTK-E11).
Sauld sexual y reproductiva en adolescentes de comunidades rurales e indígenas
This is a fact sheet with statistical information on the sexual and reproductive health of adolescents in the Mexican state of Guerrero. It is meant to provide relevant information on sexual and reproductive health indicators to health and policy makers as well as recommendation for improving sexual and reproductive health services and access.
Ipas Celebrates Our Work With Youth
Ipas works around the world every day to strengthen girls’ voices and their ability to choose the path that’s right for them.
Young women and abortion: A situation assessment guide
This guide focuses on ways to plan, implement, use and finalize an assessment of how young women and their communities relate to abortion, through locally relevant, community and/or youth-led processes. It is designed to gain insights into the local context surrounding abortion care for young women to inform program design and to support meaningful youth participation in project design. It is a global resource for community groups, youth groups, peer educators, trainers, administrators, program managers and technical advisors of abortion care programs.
Servicios de aborto para las mujeres jóvenes: Un juego de herramientas para la capacitación
Este juego de herramientas fue creado para proporcionar información y orientación sobre la prestación y accesibilidad de servicios de aborto inducido a mujeres jóvenes (entre 10 y 24 años de edad), según corresponda. Ofrece a capacitadores con experiencia antecedentes, materiales, instrucciones y consejos necesarios para facilitar las sesiones de capacitación de manera eficaz. Dado que los estudios de investigación realizados muestran pocas diferencias en las necesidades clínicas de las mujeres jóvenes en comparación con adultas, el juego de herramientas contiene más información sobre promoción y defensa (advocacy), alianzas y prestación de servicios que sobre temas clínicos. Es un recurso mundial para prestadores de servicios de salud, capacitadores, gerentes y asesores técnicos de programas de servicios de aborto, pero algunos materiales también se pueden utilizar para promover la participación de jóvenes, formuladores de políticas grupos comunitarios, donantes, promotores y otras partes interesadas.
Empowering women workers through youth-led education on reproductive health and safe abortion in Nepal
From 2011-2012, Ipas and our partners implemented a series of classes on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR)—including information on safe abortion—for women who work at factories across Nepal’s Kathmandu Valley. This report explains how our project increased women workers’ knowledge of SRHR topics so they can better manage their own health and relationships and serve as resources for their families and communities. The report includes background information on Ipas’s work with youth, the context of sexual and reproductive health services for women workers in the Kathmandu Valley, details on the project’s various components, and explanation of key outcomes.
Comprehensive sexuality education for youth
Comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) is a critical means of improving young people’s access to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services and their ability to make safe and informed decisions. However, the topic of abortion remains absent from most CSE programs, which diminishes young people’s ability to avoid the dangers of unsafe abortion and to exercise their right to safe, legal abortion services. This factsheet summarizes the global movement to improve and expand CSE and offers key standards and approaches for creating quality CSE programs that include accurate, non-biased information about contraception and safe abortion.
Abortion among adolescents and girls
Young women and girls account for nearly one-third of all unsafe abortion-related deaths each year worldwide, with 15% of all unsafe abortions taking place among adolescents ages 15-19. Despite growing global attention to the health and welfare of adolescents and girls, little is known about the abortion experiences of girls under the age of 15. This factsheet examines the unique abortion-related experiences and needs of adolescents (ages 15-19) and girls (ages 10-14), based on a comprehensive literature review Ipas conducted in 2018.