Unsafe abortion and development: a strategic approach. (Special Issue: Unsafe abortion: a development issue.)

摘要

Despite 80,000 female deaths a year due to unsafe abortions and a higher prevalence of them occurring in developing countries, abortion remains a women's reproductive health problem instead of a development problem. In fact, it calls for a stronger advocacy strategy for greater consciousness-raising and sensitisation. The Campaign Against Unwanted Pregnancy (CAUP) in Nigeria seeks to employ a multi-pronged strategy that seeks to break the silence on unsafe abortion to create climate for discourse, conduct reliable studies to provide data for debate, and employ the data as a tool to rally support for action on women's sexual and reproductive health and rights in general, and safe abortion specifically. Undertaken primarily through partnering community and faith-based organisations, the CAUP seeks to engage policymakers, the media, community-based organisations and religious and traditional leaders as part of a strategy to build up a critical mass of advocates that will fight to reduce high levels of mortality caused by unsafe abortion.