By sumanOn

Abortion is a significant risk to women’s health. As per the Government of India guidelines despite the liberalization of abortion services more than 50 years ago in the health sector of India , many women still not have safe access to services related to the Abortion. To solve this problem, safe abortion mission is currently included in the health care settings of India by adding this to maternal health policy.

As per the Comprehensive Abortion care (CAC) guideline which was launched in 2023 by GOI in the Collaboration with IPAS, the high number of illegal and unsafe abortions in India influenced by several factors (variables), which including:

Source: GOI CAC Guideline
  1. Social Factors
    • Majority of Peoples are not knowing that abortion is a legal process, in that sence we can say the Lack of Awareness is one of the factor
    • Abortion-related social stigma
    • Women’s poor position in the house and prejudice based on gender via family and society restrict them from making strong decisions about their health
    • Lack of responsibility from their partners
    • Women’s may hesitate to go and take treatment from Male Doctors
    • Attitudes of the Doctors/ Health Professionals towards women coming to the facility for Abortion Care
  2. Policy Factors: Policies serve as a roadmap for the government to implement programmes. Policy considerations that influence accessibility to safe abortion services include:
    • Legal provisions for abortion are not widely shared
    • Unavailability of well qualified Doctors/health professionals (providers) for safe abortion services at facility level across the country
    • At ground level Insufficient availability and supplies of the equipment
    • Uses of Family planning methods (Contraceptives) are very low
    • Provider used to Forced a specific Family planning methods (contraceptive) during care of abortion
    • Poor referral/Follow-up system
  3. Economic Factors: It includes cost and profit which also impacts the decisions of the women’s and theirs family member’s to seek health care. As per the survey in the government facilities health care providers used to ask for bribe in the view to provide the care.
    Other hand Private hospitals and clinics who demand excessive costs for services which automatically reduces the access.
  4. Physical Access Factors: Women’s usually faces physical barriers to get access of safe abortion services.
    • Numbers of trained providers are very less in the specially in rural and tribal areas
    • In community peoples are not aware of available health care setting that shows lack of advertisement at ground level
    • lack of transportation facility

A Comprehensive overview of Abortion rate in India

Let’s discuss about the few key figure of related to Abortion-

  • One woman dies from complications due to following an unsafe abortion every two hours. Many of the survivors have incapacitating, chronic illnesses.
  • As per RGI: Sample Registration System (SRS) 2001-2003 data source, 8% of the Maternal Mortality occurs due to abortion, though its varies across the states of India.
  • As per the Sample Registration System (SRS) 2018-2020 data base Maternal mortality rate (MMR) in India is 97/100,000 live births.

Across the State these are the major Causes of Maternal Mortality in India

Source: RGI: Sample Registration System (SRS) 2001-2003

Maternal Mortality rate (MMR) across the state in India

Source: Sample Registration System (SRS) 2018-2020

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