By Elizabeth Clark | Annual Fund Officer, Ipas
Thank you for continued support and belief in the right of all women and people who can get pregnant to access reproductive health care, including abortion. Your support of Ipas through the GlobalGiving platform allows us to continue fighting for abortion access globally.
While reproductive rights continue to be contentious here in the United States, with near-total bans on abortion care in Texas and other states now following that lead, we continue to see progress around the world for abortion access. In the Francophone region of Africa, for example, an innovative effort to strengthen the movement for safe abortion is underway. Le Centre ODAS (Organisation pour le Dialogue pour l’Avortement Sécurisé / Organization for Safe Abortion Dialogue) launched in September and will unite diverse actors working to expand abortion access across Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Togo, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Ipas is serving as the initiative’s founding host, providing support over the first three years as Le Centre provides training opportunities, shares best practices, coordinates strategies, and mobilizes funding for ODAS members to pursue an ambitious regional agenda to expand abortion access. In many settings in Francophone Africa, attention has rarely been paid to the great unmet need for safe abortion. Le Centre ODAS is an exciting step forward, and we are glad for your support as it continues to grow.
In Mexico, after years of hard work by activists, the supreme court ruled criminalizing abortion is unconstitutional. It is a historic ruling that expands reproductive rights across Mexico, and also led to Coahuila becoming the fifth Mexican state where abortion is legal during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy (joining the states of Mexico City, Oaxaca, Hidalgo and Veracruz). But in the rest of Mexico, abortion remains legally restricted. With the supreme court ruling, the process can begin to lift those legal restrictions state by state. Our partners and staff in Mexico look forward to supporting advocates’ work to lift remaining legal restrictions and to help health providers and the ministry of health ensure high-quality abortion services are available and accessible.
Ipas and our partners knew when the COVID-19 pandemic began that abortion access would suffer worldwide. We worked tirelessly to ensure that information on abortion with pills is widely available in the countries where we work, and we launched a webpage full of resources on how to safely self-manage an abortion with pills: www.ipas.org/AbortionWithPills. The page includes an instructional video, a how-to guide, tips for finding abortion pills that are safe and effective, and further resources from partner organizations.
We continue the fight for global abortion access and are so grateful to have you on our team. These past two years have posed new challenges for reproductive rights, but also have shown the vital importance of our efforts to ensure all people have access to reproductive health care, including abortion. We are honored to share our progress and challenges with you, our dedicated donors.
As we head into the new year, I am excited to see what is next for Ipas and the movement. I hope you are, as well.
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