World Health Organization (WHO) Issues New Abortion Guideline
First time in a decade since WHO has issued comprehensive abortion guideline, most progressive guidance to date.
03.08.22 (STATEMENT) – Today the World Health Organization issued its new abortion guideline, which is the organization’s definitive recommendations on abortion care. It provides recommendations on the clinical management of abortion, service delivery, as well as on law and policy approaches states and health systems should take on abortion. The Abortion Care Guideline provides concrete recommendations on good practice for law and policymakers, program managers, healthcare workers, and other stakeholders in the field of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) to support them in ensuring that evidence and human rights-based abortion care—including pre-abortion, abortion and post-abortion care—is available globally.
Statement from Nancy Northup, President and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights:
“The WHO guideline puts rigorous public health data on what the Center for Reproductive Rights has long argued and women and people across the globe know: that quality abortion care is an essential health service and access to abortion care is a human right.
As governments in countries such as the United States and Poland act to further restrict abortion access, the WHO guideline provides concrete, evidence-based proof that access to abortion is fundamental to ensuring health as well as a human right and should be more, not less, accessible.
We’re pleased that the world’s leading public health body has clearly validated the well-researched public health evidence that restrictive abortion laws cause harm to women around the world and must be reformed. It is time now for governments, health systems and others to take heed of the WHO guidance and implement its recommendations so that the right to access abortion is fully realized and human rights are respected.”
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