Safe Abortion

Establishing a Referral System for Safe and Legal Abortion Care: A Pilot Project on the Thailand-Burma Border

Meredith Walsh
Angel M. Foster
Grady Arnott
Margaret Hobstetter
Htin Zaw
Cynthia Maung
Cari Sietstra
2016

Women from Burma living in Thailand are generally unable to access safe abortion care—even for cases that clearly fall within the legal exceptions—because of a lack of knowledge of the Thai medical and legal systems, restrictions on travel and movement, the costs associated with the procedure, a dearth of culturally and linguistically compatible providers, and stigma. As a consequence, women from Burma on both sides of the border suffer significant reproductive health morbidities as a result of unsafe abortion. This context motivated the pilot project described in this report. We...

Medical society engagement in contentious policy reform: the Ethiopian Society for Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ESOG) and Ethiopia’s 2005 reform of its Penal Code on Abortion

Sarah Jane Holcombe
2018

Globally, but particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, health professionals have significant influence in shaping national health policy, including in the often sensitive field of reproductive health. Obstetrician-gynecologists have perhaps the most clout related to reproductive health policy, given their high levels of training, social standing and male gender. However, their ob-gyn professional societies have rarely supported abortion law reform, despite its promise for reducing women’s mortality and morbidity. This study of the contributions of Ethiopia’s ob-gyn society yields several...