Abortion: How does its ban affect women’s safety?

It can cause physical and psychological problems for women. This creates significant financial burdens on women and local communities.

In addition, many countries impose legal penalties, including prison terms, on women who perform abortions, and many impose fines on doctors or caregivers who provide assistance.

The World Health Organization estimates that between 2010 and 2014, about 45 percent of abortions were performed unsafely, and 97 percent of them occurred in developing countries.

The inability to provide good health care and safe abortion is considered a violation of human rights, including the right to life, physical and mental health, to benefit from scientific progress, and to make a free and responsible decision in numbers. Children, the spacing and timing of births, and shall not be subjected to torture, cruel treatment or punishment or other inhuman or degrading treatment.

“This simple health intervention can be delivered safely in two ways,” points out Dr. Bella Ganatra, from the World Health Organization’s Department of Reproductive Health and Research. Nurses or midwives at the care center.” Local health care, or by using medicine sold in tablet form.

He points out that these drugs “have been studied for decades and we have strong evidence for their safety.”

Ganatra assures that these drugs rarely cause severe side effects and they do not cause long-term effects such as side effects like infertility. Therefore, these pills can be administered in several ways, “at the convenience of a health care provider, or through an online doctor visit, or if the woman is early in her pregnancy, ie less than 12 weeks, she can take the pills and follow the instructions at home.

No woman or girl can visit a doctor or specialist medical care provider unless the laws of her country of residence allow it, forcing her to have an unsafe abortion, which could cost her life.

Ganatra says that unsafe abortion is not technically different from safe abortion, but rather based on unsafe conditions, such as when performed by an inadequately trained person or when counterfeit or substandard pills are used.

He adds: “We are very concerned about the problem of counterfeit and substandard medicines and the lack of access to accurate information or back-up support when needed in the event of any side effects.”

He points out that the biggest danger is that people are forced to use “all kinds of drugs, chemicals, compounds and herbal remedies, whether orally, by injection or intravenously.” “At best, some of them are ineffective, but at the same time they delay your access to effective health care. At worst, they are very dangerous, even fatal,” he adds.

Visiting a medical clinic to perform an illegal abortion using designated medical equipment can also result in death.

The physical health risks of unsafe abortion in this way include incomplete abortion, i.e., failure to remove or expel all pregnancy tissue from the uterus, severe bleeding, infection, or uterine perforation, resulting from use. A sharp instrument for abortion. Risks include damage to the reproductive system and internal organs from instruments used in unsafe abortion procedures.

Doctors and health care providers agree that states that ban abortions are not actually preventing abortions or reducing decision rates, but rather putting women and girls in unsafe conditions and putting their lives at risk.

Doctors Without Borders Obstetrician Dr. Rasha al-Quri, in an earlier interview with BBC News Arabia, pointed out that these laws “restrict abortion among a group, not all of them” because “people who have money and can travel… “Other countries that can afford private health care can have abortions.”

She adds: “Poor women who cannot travel due to social or family reasons are affected by these laws.”

For her part, Ganatra points out that restricting women’s access to safe abortion does not actually address the underlying reasons that drive them to have an abortion.

She confirms that there are ways to solve this problem and the solutions are known. “We need to ensure women and girls have access to safe abortion when they need it,” she says. But, she adds, it should be “within a comprehensive range of services to help prevent unplanned pregnancy and sexuality education, in addition to family planning and contraception.”

“When we provide comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care, when we put women and girls at the heart of decision-making, and we care about their health, only then can we eliminate the problem of unsafe abortion,” she points out.

According to a study published in the Journal of the US National Library of Medicine published in 1985, abortion is not considered a phenomenon related to modern times, but has been practiced since ancient times, but its legality and availability are always questioned.

Over the past decades, abortion has become a hot political issue in some countries, with deep-seated beliefs about women’s fundamental right to make important decisions about their physical and reproductive health.

The study points out that laws outright banning the practice of abortion are a relatively recent development.

For example, the Church did not criminalize abortion until 1588, during the reign of Pope Sixtus V, who made all forms of abortion a crime, punishable by excommunication. However, this decision has since changed several times.

Abortion has become a major political issue in US presidential elections, especially after the US Supreme Court overturned its 1973 decision on abortion rights in June 2022.