Women's Human Rights: Making Abortion Legal

It is a common decision for millions of women, girls and others to end a pregnancy. It is a basic healthcare need for all women. The number of abortions per pregnancy is estimated to be 1 in 4 every year. 

Abortion is a medical procedure performed to end a pregnancy. However, even though abortions are common, access to safe and legal abortion services is far from guaranteed.

In fact, abortion access today is one of the most controversial topics globally, and the debate is clouded by misinformation about the actual consequences of restricting abortion access.

Whether or not abortion is legal, people will continue to require and regularly obtain abortion services. As the Guttmacher Institute reports, women who live in countries that prohibit abortions or only allow them for life-saving purposes have a higher abortion rate, followed by women who permit abortion, a statistically insignificant difference.

Abortions are one of the least dangerous medical procedures, even safer than giving birth if a trained health care provider performs them in safe conditions.

By restricting access to abortions, people will force to seek risky, illegal abortions, especially those who cannot afford to fly or seek private care. This issue will bring us to the following point. 

Preventing women and girls from receiving an abortion does not eliminate their need for the procedure. An attempts to ban or restrict abortions have little effect on the number of abortions. Instead, it only forces women to seek unsafe abortions.

They estimate that 25 million unsafe abortions occur annually, with the vast majority occurring in developing nations.

Contrary to legal abortions performed by a skilled medical professional, unsafe abortions can have fatal outcomes. According to the WHO, unsafe abortions are the third biggest cause of maternal deaths globally and inflict an extra five million impairments that are generally preventable.

It is a human right to have access to safe abortion services. According to international human rights law, everyone has the right to life, health, and freedom from violence, discrimination, torture, and other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.

This is known as physical autonomy, which is explicitly stated in human rights law.

Forcing someone to carry an undesirable pregnancy to term or to seek an unsafe abortion violates important human rights, including the right to privacy and the right to have sovereignty over their body.

Those who have no other option but to undergo unsafe abortions frequently suffer prosecution and punishment, including incarceration, harsh, inhumane, and humiliating treatment, discrimination, and exclusion from crucial post-abortion health care.

Access to abortion is therefore vitally connected to protecting and upholding the human rights of millions of women and girls and those who could become pregnant, and hence to achieve social and gender justice.

Every individual should have the right to exercise their bodily autonomy and make independent decisions in their reproductive lives, including whether or not to have children. It is imperative that abortion regulations respect, protect, and fulfill the human rights of pregnant women and do not push them to seek dangerous abortions.