Implementing Reproductive Rights: Identifying Cost-Effective Strategies to Increase Access to Safe Abortion Care

Heidi B. Johnston, Ipas
Janie Benson, Ipas

Abortion is legal for some indication in 118 of the world’s 192 countries. Nonetheless, safe abortion is often not accessible on the grounds for which it is legal, and accessing appropriate care for abortion complications can be challenging. Consequently, for largely socio-political reasons, unsafe abortion is a leading cause of maternal mortality. This paper presents a discussion of a newly-developed demographic-economic model that demonstrates the costs of multiple technological, personnel, and other strategies of providing abortion and postabortion care in varying abortion policy and service delivery contexts. Through estimating comparative costs of strategies of legal abortion and postabortion care provision, the model identifies the most cost-effective mechanisms to increase access to abortion care and associated services. With current widespread health sector reform, exploration of the financing of safe abortion care service delivery, as well as means of increasing access, is particularly timely to influence key decision-makers in challenging socio-political contexts.