News Review – 5 January 2018 | Center for International Reproductive Health Training

The Value of Family Planning

The UK Department for International Development (DFID) issued a tidy summary of the value of money spent on family planning: £225 million through 2022, “will every year help save the lives of over 6,000 women by preventing maternal deaths – that’s one woman every 90 minutes; support nearly 20 million women to receive voluntary contraceptives through family planning services; help avert 6 million unintended pregnancies; and help prevent the trauma of 75,000 stillbirths and nearly 44,000 new-born deaths.”

FP advocates in Senegal, where 90 percent of the population is Muslim, are finding key allies in imams, using the idea that “modern contraception is an extension of traditional Islamic practices… Advocates say that since imams started getting involved, birth control is beginning to enjoy far wider social acceptance. Since 2011, the number of married Senegalese women using modern contraceptives has doubled from 12 percent to about 23 percent.”

A UN 2012 report declared “Contraception is a Human Right” — yet “the UN estimates that the lack of availability of contraception services affect 11 percent of sexually active women worldwide between 15 and 49 who either don’t want any more children or would like to delay the birth of their next child. In sub-Saharan Africa, this figure rises to 25 percent.”

Conflicting messages emanating from the Kenyan press: An editorial calls for greater emphasis on preventing teen pregnancy through “comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education and information into the school curriculum and other platforms.” Nevertheless, one MP called for his constituents to ignore family planning, using the argument, “It’s good to give birth to many children since you don’t know who will help you in future. You might give birth to one child who may end up being a thief.”

The East African Legislative Assembly is looking to address all of these issues, including safe abortion access, in its Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights bill.

Access to Safe Abortion

CIRHT works with partner institutions on pre-service training for doctors, nurses and midwives in comprehensive abortion care. A new study from IPAS also calls for post-training support as well, providing “a key to high-quality care.”

In the UK, abortion clinics will be given starred ratings by the Department of Health’s Care Quality Commission. British Columbia has become the sixth Canadian province to provide free access to the abortion pill.

Preserving access to safe and legal abortion remains a political battle in Chile, despite a recent change in the law. In Brazil, women are telling their stories of illegal and dangerous abortion to oppose proposed new restrictions. And Ireland is having an open debate about the upcoming referendum on repealing an anti-abortion constitutional article. A debate has also begun in heavily-Catholic Malta.

Safe and effective use of the abortion pill has been shown in yet another study, leading the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to object to the “criminalization” of self-induced abortions. Debates continue across the US, where the Trump administration is trying to deny abortion rights to undocumented teenagers, and in the courts and legislatures of New York, Illinois, Indiana, and Utah. As an indicator of regional disparities, Kentucky is poised to become the first US state without an abortion clinic, while Hawaii is piloting “tele-abortion” for people who lives miles (or islands) away from the nearest clinic; an Ohio clinic is boldly advertising on billboards yet in Wisconsin Catholic hospitals are gaining market share and therefore restricting access to abortions and even tubal ligations. The various barriers that are put in place can be explored through a browser-based video game called “Trapped.”

Resources

UNFPA released its updated Adolescents and Youth Dashboard for Africa, with information on Family Planning, Adolescent Pregnancy, and Sexual and Reproductive Health – useful statistics at your fingertips. Guttmacher released its compendium of trends in the US in 2017. And the National Institute for Reproductive Health has suggestions about what to do to expand reproductive rights in the US in 2018.

Academic

Adolescents and Youth Dashboard, UNFPA, 5 Jan 2018 (Updated resource)

Women’s reproductive health knowledge, attitudes and practices in relation to the Zika virus outbreak in northeast Brazil, PLOS One, 3 Jan 2018

Policy Trends in the States, 2017, Guttmacher, 2 Jan 2018

About Half of U.S. Abortion Patients Report Using Contraception in the Month They Became Pregnant, Guttmacher, 28 Dec 2017

Taking Family Planning Advocacy Efforts to Scale: Results from Nusa Dua, AFP/PAI, November 2017

Burkina Faso

Santé de la reproduction à Koudougou, Faso24, 4 Jan 2018

Kenya

Give our girls a future by preventing teen pregnancy, Daily Nation, 3 Jan 2018

Ignore family planning urges Sudi, Hivisasa, 31 Dec 2017

Liberia