Summary: By Adrienne Germain(Critical Issues in Global Health, edited by C. Everett Koop, M.D.,Sc.D., Clarence E. Pearson, MPH, and M. Roy Schwarz, M.D. SanFrancisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000). Invited chapter lays out policy priorities for the 21st Century that address the continuing human threats to women's reproductive and sexual health (8 pages)

>>Available in PDF / Available in French and Spanish

Summary: By Adrienne Germain and Theresa Kim (New York: IWHC, 1999). Demonstrates how to use international conference agreements and human rights instruments to argue for access to safe abortion services, and describes strategies that are being used across a wide range of countries to implement such services (44 pages).

Of the estimated 45 million pregnancies worldwide that are terminated by abortion every year, perhaps 19 million involve unsafe procedures performed by women themselves, by unskilled providers, or in settings lacking the minimal medical standards. An estimated 68,000 women die unnecessarily from complications resulting from unsafe abortion and countless others suffer from infections, infertility, and other damage to the reproductive tract. These deaths account for 13 percent of all pregnancy-related deaths globally and over one-quarter in some countries. Yet, evidence from countries where women have full access to safe services shows that abortion-related deaths and disability can be virtually eliminated with appropriate policies and programs.

Your contribution will help us support activists like Esther Endalé (right), pictured here outside the Maroua, Cameroun, office of ALVF (The Association for the Struggle Against Violence Against Women), a group co-founded by Esther and five colleagues in 1991. Click  here to meet more of IWHC's colleagues worldwide.

>>Available in Word and PDF / Available in Spanish

Summary: By Françoise Girard (Journal of Women's Health and Law, Vol. I, No. 1, November, 1999, Toronto and Vancouver: Butterworths). Analyzes the significance for women's health of the UN's five-year review of implementation of the Programme of Action agreed in the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD). The author outlines and discusses the significance and impact of the original ICPD agreements and of the new commitments made by governments in 1999 to hasten implementation of the Programme of Action (14 pages).

  

Summary: By Corinne Whitaker and Adrienne Germain (African Journal of Reproductive Health, Vol. 3, No. 2, October, 1999, Benin City, Nigeria: Women's Health and Action Research Centre). Invited editorial co-authored by IWHC Senior Program Officer for Africa and IWHC President that describes the scope of the problem of unsafe abortion in Africa and outlines several possible approaches to solving it (4 pages).