Safe Abortion Advocacy: an ongoing challenge Latin American Consortium Against Unsafe Abortion CLACAI MARIA Abortion Fund for Social Justice

CLACAI  CLACAI articulates four sectors: Advocacy, Services, Research and Legal Defense.  CLACAI’s aim is to reduce the rate of unsafe abortion and increase access to modern and safe technologies, ensuring the full respect of sexual and reproductive rights of women.

Advocacy on what?  Indications?  Abortion as part of Women’s Human Rights  Access to Safe Abortion  Women having the power  Women accesing technologies  To build citizenship for women: the State is responsible

Medical Abortion a Need in Latin America  The lack of access to safe services, even when the law allows it  The possibility of all women to have a safe abortion by themselves.  Lack of access to modern contraceptives  The stigma related to abortion and the use of misoprostol by the women themselves inside the medical federations, some sectors of the women and feminist movements, the lawyers, etc.  Lack of control on private practices is both a risk and a benefit. On one hand is possible to get a safe abortion and in the other hand is possible several violations of human rights of women and unsafe procedures

Our threats  Pharmaceutical industry, they only seek profits, without enhancing the obstetric use, following conservative approaches.  Governments are not taking care of women’s rights and health, they don’t provide comprehensive sexual and reproductive services, including abortion care. If the State is not buying misoprostol for public use then the industry is not interested on talking about the obstetric use.  Opposition has plenty of attention to misoprostol and it has become a battle field.  Until now many of the countries in the LAC region have been irregular with the registration mechanisms on medications, but there is a shift on that due to the free trade treaty, threatening the access to the medication.  There is a diminishing interest on the international cooperation to invest on the region, and on abortion. Therefore a de-politization of the sexual and reproductive agenda is happening.

Hands On: LAC  To Broaden the legal access: The struggle to have more indications for legal abortion and real access to them. Many women’s organizations has had an impact with the health and violence indications.  To Raise Awareness on abortion: One of the major difficulties in our region is the strong presence and power of the catholic church. Women’s organizations have strategies to speak about abortion and women’s right to choose. It is also about giving information directly to women.  To Generate Knowledge on Medical Abortion: There are many limitations, but evidence is being produced, CLACAI has studies, from the epidemiology, cost, and women’s approach and an Online tool to search cientific evidence on medical abortion that is a support to women’s movement to de-stigmitize medical abortion.

Our Challenges  To have real access we need to include other sectors:  Pharmaceuticals  Legal community  Medical Registration Activists (Essential Medications)  We need to have Advocacy on abortion as women’s Human Right to:  Reduce abortion related stigma  Broaden access to safe abortion services  Make governments accountable for their actions as well as lack of actions  We need advocacy on medical abortion because:  The power is on women’s hands  To broaden women’s options  To brake vertical structure

More Challenges  Abortion on the Second trimester are still kept invisible, leaving in the dark the must vulnerabilized women.  We still need to work to eradicate the total prohibition from countries in LAC  We need a strong support mass from medical sector.

MARIA Fund  The MARIA Fund is an advocacy tool that makes visible the need of all women to have access to safe abortion  We work from Mexico City broadening the city’s law to all women in the country  Since 2011 with the support from the Ecuador hotline we are able to give a better direct support to women by giving misoprostol information and phone support  We work in alliance with other women orgs and groups to decriminalize abortion in all the country, and work against abortion related stigma and stigma on self use of misoprostol

Medical Abortion in Mexico  It is accessible, with the city’s law plenty of options came for women to by misoprostol at lower costs. It is possible to redirect funds to other aspects of SRR.  Mexico City has now the mifepristone registered for hospital use  It is an option for women everywhere, without medical support  It is safe  It is simple