Today marks the International Safe Abortion Day. For this campaign, we have decided to bring this issue to you through moving testimonies from the You Know Me movement, a campaign started this year after the passing of anti-abortion laws in Georgia, Ohio and Alabama in the United States.
WHAT ?
Abortion is the termination of pregnancy before fetal viability, generally evaluated at 20 weeks. It concerns women all around us as 1 in every 4 women undergo abortion before the age of 45.As it it not an often-discussed topic despite its importance, we have chosen to increase visibility and knowledge on this issue through videos, posts, resources and activity ideas. We want to urge you to do your part in promoting abortion as a means of healthcare! Please share this post and contribute to the promotion of the topic in the upcoming days!
WHY ?
Unsafe abortions continue to be a leading cause of disability and death among young women, with over 25 million unsafe abortions happening every year. Many simple measures exist to prevent these saddening human casualties: contraception usage, proper sexual education but most importantly: access to safe abortion. However, many times, countries fail to realize the importance of this issue, either because their laws already allow this procedure or because they do not relate to the rights of these women. Some countries enforce anti-abortion laws to the point of incarcerating women with spontaneous abortions
HOW ?
There are many ways every one of us can be involved in harm reduction for reduce these preventable deaths.
- We can raise awareness on abortion.
- We can promote abortion policies or pressure policy makers to address the issue.
- We can provide basic counselling on abortion for those around us.
- We can choose to become abortion providers.
- We can raise our voices to support access to abortion care!
Resources:
- Ipas Drive
- IFMSA’s policy document on Ensuring Access to Safe Abortion
- Website of the International Safe Abortion Day: link
- Video about the role of health workers
- Factsheet on Unsafe Abortion by WHO
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