Safe abortion is a necessary component of reproductive health services, though some parties continue to contest the issue. In the ICPD, Paragraph 8.25 speaks of the need to reduce the recourse to abortion through contraception; pre-and-post abortion counselling; where abortion is not against the law, such abortion should be safe; and that at the very least, all countries should have access to services for the management of complications arising from abortion. As the ICPD PoA was negotiated between countries, some compromises with regards to abortion appear within the ICPD PoA itself. All of these compromises, in 1994, led to safe abortion being caveated at different policy levels, and led to limited access for women. These compromises continue to haunt us in all inter-governmental negotiations till today. This brief is part of ARROW’s State of the Region Report on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights: International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD+25), developed as a result of monitoring of 25 years of implementing the ICPD programme of Action in the region by ARROW and our partners.
