[Brussels, 25 August 2011] In July 2011, the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) launched a 3-year project on Abortion and Stigma. They invite you to join them, in order to ‘systematise existing work around abortion stigma in order to develop a series of tools to address and combat stigma’.
Abortion overview
Every year, 42 million women have abortions, and half of them are unsafe; 47,000 women die from abortion; and 5 million have to go to the hospital for unsafe abortion complications. The lack of legislation and few appropriate services are the main reasons that prevent women from having a safe abortion.
IPPF and abortion
IPPF is a global service provider and a leading advocate of sexual and reproductive health and rights for all. They have six Regional Offices in the World (Africa (Nairobi, Kenya); Arab World (Tunis, Tunisia); Europe (Brussels, Belgium); South Asia (New Delhi, India); East, South East Asia and Oceania (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia), Western Hemisphere (New York, USA)).
One of the aim of IPPF is to reduce the number of abortions worldwide that are unsafe. Their Member Associations are committed to identifying actions that will increase a woman’s right to access abortion-related services, including counselling and post-abortion care, as well as safe abortion services.
IPPF 3-year project on Abortion Stigma
IPPF think that ‘There is an increasing understanding of the role abortion stigma plays in perpetuating unsafe abortion through limiting both access to, and quality of, safe abortion services.’
In the beguinning of July, IPPF gathered with international experts during a meeting in order to disccus about abortion stigma. This led to the launch of the 3-year-project on Abortion Stigma.
IPPF decided, for the next 3 years, to ‘systematise existing work around abortion stigma in order to develop a series of tools to address and combat stigma.’ It aims at finding resources to fight abortion stigma, putting in place interventions, clinical facilities and work at policies levels to increase awareness about stigma and to combat it, and at developping country-level workplans for the period 2011-13.
IPPF invite organisations and people to participate to this project. If you or your organisation have done work in this area and are interested in becoming part of a virtual community on abortion stigma, you can contact Jennifer Woodside: jwoodside@ippf.org.
To know more about the work of IPPF concerning abortion, visit their website.
