But what is most troubling is that globally 45% of induced abortions are unsafe. It is estimated that every year 29,000 pregnant women and girls die from unsafe abortion and 7 million are injured or disabled due to unsafe abortion worldwide. Unsafe abortion also leads to social and financial burdens for women, communities and health systems.
More than half of all unsafe abortions occur in Asia, most of them in south and central Asia. In Latin America and Africa, the majority (approximately 3 out of 4) of all abortions are unsafe. In Africa, nearly half of all abortions occurred under the least safe circumstances.
But what is perhaps more devastating is that deaths due to unsafe abortion are entirely preventable. It is lack of access to safe, timely, affordable and respectful abortion care that leads to these preventable maternal deaths.
Gender equality and right to health are fundamental human rights
"Violations of human rights are an early warning system. We need to use racial equity and anti-colonial frameworks to advance progress on right to health. Human rights unite all of us and not divide us. We should resist and push back harder on the (wrong) notion that human rights are divisive. Human rights are the actual basis of how we can move forward with something in common as humans. Protecting human right to health requires a constant analysis of power. None of us can imagine a future without a commitment to constantly analyse power, how it moves and shifts through us as individuals, and how it moves and shifts through our own organisations, and other multilateral systems," added Dr Tlaleng.
"The idea that one can dislocate the right to health (which includes right to safe abortion) from other human rights is impossible. It is also good to remember that when we realise the right to health, we enable many other human rights. Therefore, by realising the human right to health, we can actually get to gender equality too," added Tlaleng.
Crossroads: Will governments take the rights path?
"We are at the crossroads when it comes to gender equality and human right to health. The assault on the right to health (which includes right to abortion) is more than any other time. This is a time that we need to unite and make sure that everyone has the right to health regardless of gender, sexuality or where they are born. That is why the Global Center for Health Diplomacy and Inclusion was established to raise the voice of the global south in global health negotiations," said Dr Haileyesus Getahun, Chief Executive Officer of HeDPAC, an organisation dedicated to strengthening south-to-south partnerships in health development and founder of Global Center for Health Diplomacy and Inclusion (CeHDI).
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