BACKGROUND Recent legislation has sought to clarify abortion law in Ireland, allowing abortion where pregnancy endangers a woman's life, including through risk of suicide. Previous studies have shown that medical students' attitudes towards abortion can predict their likelihood to provide abortion care services in the future. AIM To survey graduate-entry (GEM) and undergraduate-entry (i.e. sc...

CONTEXT Abortion is highly restricted by law in Senegal. Although women seek care for abortion complications, no national estimate of abortion incidence exists. METHODS Data on postabortion care and abortion in Senegal were collected in 2013 using surveys of a nationally representative sample of 168 health facilities that provide postabortion care and of 110 professionals knowledgeable about ...

BACKGROUND Despite a liberal abortion law, access to safe abortion services in South Africa is challenging for many women. Medication abortion was introduced in 2013, but its reach remains limited. We aimed to estimate the costs and cost effectiveness of providing first-trimester medication abortion and manual vacuum aspiration (MVA) services to inform planning for first-trimester service provi...

BACKGROUND Data of abortion incidence and trends are needed to monitor progress toward improvement of maternal health and access to family planning. To date, estimates of safe and unsafe abortion worldwide have only been made for 1995 and 2003. METHODS We used the standard WHO definition of unsafe abortions. Safe abortion estimates were based largely on official statistics and nationally repr...

BACKGROUND The circumstances under which women obtain unsafe abortion vary and depend on the traditional methods known and the type of providers present. In rural Tanzania women often resort to traditional providers who use plant species as abortion remedies. Little is known about how these plants are used and their potential effect. METHODS Data were obtained among women admitted with incomp...

Background Medical abortion with mifepristone and misoprostol was introduced in Norway in 1998, and since then there has been an almost complete change from predominantly surgical to medical abortions. We aimed to describe the medical abortion implementation process, and to compare characteristics of women obtaining medical and surgical abortion. Methods Information from all departments of ob...

CONTEXT Unsafe abortion is an important health problem in Ethiopia; however, no national quantitative study of abortion incidence exists. In 2005, the penal code was revised to broaden the indications under which induced abortion is legal. It is important to measure the incidence of legal and illegal induced abortion after the change in the law. METHODS A nationally representative survey of a...

From 2004 to 2014, the overall abortion rate in Texas fell by almost a third from 10.7 to 7.2 abortions per 1000 women aged 10 to 49 years. During this same period, the number of abortion clinics operating at least 6 months in the year fell from 40 to 27. We examined the relationship between the abortion rate and the proximity of abortion facilities. We matched annual, county-level data on abor...

How do abortion providers determine how late in pregnancy they will provide abortion services? While law, training and socio-political factors likely play a part, this essay considers additional factors, including: personal and psychological aspects, visceral responses to the fetus and fetal parts at later gestations, feelings that second trimester abortion is violent, and ethical concerns with...

For more than a decade, there has been a significant shift in public attitudes towards abortion in Ireland. Opinion polls and research consistently show increased support for access to abortion within Ireland: In May 2017, an Irish Times/Ipos MRBI poll [1] found that 73% of respondents agreed with abortion up to 12 weeks gestation. Also in May 2017, the results of a Behaviour and Attitudes Poll...