On the Global Day of Action for access to safe and legal abortion, HERA – Health Education and Research Association joins global movement for promotion of women’s reproductive freedom and the rights of women to access safe and legal abortion.
Worldwide, approximately 5 million women are hospitalized each year for treatment of complications associated with abortion. On average, 19 million unsafe abortions occur each year in developing countries, while 47,000 women die – a figure which accounts for 13% of maternal mortality globally.
Although the majority of the abortions in Europe are conducted legally and safely, still due to the growing trends of legal restrictions on access to abortion, it is assumed that in the upcoming years the more number of women in European countries will decide to use unsafe and illegal methods in order to exercise their own right to terminate unwanted pregnancy.
The right to abortion as part of the corpus of sexual and reproductive rights is recognized in a number of International human rights documents, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development.
Exactly 40 years Macedonian women enjoy the right to abortion and the right of personal choice to terminate the pregnancy. Since 1972, with the adoption of the Law on termination of pregnancy, until now it has been drastically reduced the number of the unsafe abortions, and the women’s deaths related to complications of abortion is a distant past in our country.
Today with the development of the reproductive science technologies and the introduction of the medical abortion (termination of pregnancy by using tablets) is also enhanced the quality of service because it allows women to have additional available method, in addition to the surgical abortion to end a pregnancy, and which is offering more privacy and less expenses that the surgical abortion. Although in a number of European Union countries this method is increasingly becoming regular practice, in Macedonia this method is not yet available. For this purpose it is necessary registration of the medical abortion drugs, which are part of the essential drug list of the World Health Organization, and proper training of health staff, as Macedonian women who have decided to make abortion would have enjoyed not only the right of personal choice but also the right to choose which method to terminate the unwanted pregnancy.
