In a few days, the 69th United Nations General Assembly will take stock of 20 years of action for sexual and reproductive health rights. On this occasion, Médecins du Monde, Family Planning and the association Equilibre et populations, decided to launch a manifesto in favor of safe and legal abortion in the world. Entitled “Names not Numbers”, this manifesto was signed by 420 doctors and health workers.
Every 10 minutes a woman dies from unsafe abortion
The 420 manifesto, relayed by the Nouvel Obs , recalls that, in the world, a woman dies every 10 minutes as a result of an unsafe abortion. “Every year around the world, more than 20 million women terminate their pregnancies in unsafe conditions because they are condemned to go underground. These unsafe abortions result in the deaths of nearly 50,000 women, while 8 million ‘others suffer from temporary or permanent disabilities.
By means of this manifesto, the doctors demand the legalization of the access to the voluntary termination of medicalized pregnancy. “Because as physicians we know, to be directly confronted with, the dangers and serious complications to which these millions of women are exposed, we demand universal access to contraception and to safe and legal abortion.
We are mobilizing today so that every woman and every young girl has the right to have children or not, without risking her own life “.
In France, abortion is now 100% reimbursed
In the morning, Marisol Touraine, Minister of Social Affairs and Health and Pascale Boistard, Secretary of State in charge of women’s rights, received representatives of the three associations and indicated that they were doing everything possible, in France as in the world, so that this fundamental right of women to dispose of their bodies is universally recognized.
The Minister of Health recalled that she had embarked on this path in 2013, by allowing 100% refund voluntary terminations of pregnancy (abortion) for all women, and the revaluation of the prices of surgical abortions. A ministerial instruction, published every summer since 2012, asks the regional health agencies (ARS) to ensure that the establishments comply with their obligations to provide information, referral and care for patients.
