Ipas: unsafe abortion, a threat to women's health. (News and Meetings).

In observance of May 28, International Day of Action for Women's Health, Ipas -- an international non-governmental organization that has worked for nearly three decades to reduce abortion-related deaths and injuries and to increase women's ability to exercise their sexual and reproductive rights -- called on political leaders, policymakers, health care providers and others to take action against one of the most serious, most neglected and most preventable global threats to women's well-being: lack of access to safe abortion-related care.

This year's campaign theme--Women's Right to Health: A Civil Right -- is particularly relevant to abortion, which is legally permitted in at least some circumstances in almost every country. Yet women often face great difficulties obtaining induced abortion for legal indications such as rape, incest and threat to the woman's life or even treatment for abortion complications.

Governments' failure to ensure that women can obtain these and other legal services in a timely manner constitutes a tragic failure to meet their civic obligations to half their citizens. Moreover, many governments are party to international agreements committing them to reduce deaths and injuries from unsafe abortion, including by training and equipping health care providers to provide safe, timely abortion care. For example, in 1999 governments of more than 180 countries agreed that "in circumstances where abortion is not against the law, health systems should train and equip health-service providers and should take other measures to ensure that such abortion is safe and accessible." The International Day of Action for Women's Health offers an excellent opportunity to renew that commitment.

Every year nearly 70,000 women die from complications of abortion, usually following abortions performed by unqualified practitioners, in unhygienic conditions, or both. Millions more suffer serious complications, including life-threatening infection and hemorrhage, often leading to permanent infertility.

These deaths and injuries need not occur, because simple, low-cost interventions exist to treat abortion complications. The main obstacle hindering women's access to safe abortion care is lack of political will to address this enormous public-health problem.

Ipas salutes health care leaders and providers worldwide who have put women's, families' and communities' needs ahead of political constraints and are working to end deaths and injuries from unsafe abortion. Ipas challenges others to take concrete steps to improve women's access to contraceptive methods and services to prevent unintended pregnancy, to safe treatment for abortion complications and to induced abortion, in circumstances in which it is not against the law.

* From Ipas' May 28 statement, online at www.ipas.org; for more information, contact: Merrill Wolf, Deputy Director, Public Information and Media, tel.: [phone], e-mail: [e-mail]