The provision of safe abortion is crucial to the public health of all communities.
WHO advises that the choice of abortion should be readily available to women in all
national healthcare systems [
[1]
]. For more than 25 years medical abortion with combined mifepristone and misoprostol
has proved to be safe, effective and acceptable. Non-surgical methods of abortion
have been developed for both first and second trimester abortion. Medical abortion
not only increases access but there is evidence that abortions are done at lower gestations,
which is both safer and more acceptable to women. (The risks of terminating a pregnancy
increase with gestation.) Furthermore medical abortion in the early first trimester
offers the possibility of having the abortion at home or in a primary healthcare clinic,
while medical abortion at later gestations provides an alternative to highly skilled
surgery which is not always available.To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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References
- Health worker roles in providing safe abortion care and post-abortion contraception.World Health Organization, Geneva2015
- Safe abortion: technical and policy guidance for health systems.2nd edition. World Health Organization, Geneva2012 ([accessed 11.11.15])
- Commentary: the public health consequences of restricted induced abortion – lessons from Romania.Am J Public Health. 1992; 82: 1328-1331
- Induced abortion: incidence and trends worldwide from 1995 to 2008.Lancet. 2012; 379: 625-632
- Clinical follow-up compared with self-assessment of outcome after medical abortion: a multicentre, non-inferiority, randomised, controlled trial.Lancet. 2015; 385: 698-704
Article info
Publication history
Published online: April 15, 2016
Footnotes
☆Dr Kevin Sunde Oppegaard (Department of Gynaecology, Lillehammer, Norway) wrote the first draft of this Paper which was peer reviewed by the following: Professor Kristina Gemzell-Danielsson, Karolinska Institutet, Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden; Professor Anna Glasier, University of Edinburgh, Scotland; Professor Ioannis Messinis, University of Thessaly, Larissa, Greece; Professor Vlad Tica, Constanta County Emergency Hospital, Romania; Professor Paul Van Look, Val-d’Illiez, Switzerland. Professor Allan Templeton, the Chair of the EBCOG Position Statements Group, finalised the document.
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© 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
