WHO defines health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Lack of access to safe, timely, affordable and respectful abortion care poses a risk to not only the physical, but also the mental and social, well-being of women and girls.
Induced abortion is a simple and common health-care procedure. Each year, almost half of all pregnancies – 121 million – are unintended; 6 out of 10 unintended pregnancies and 3 out of 10 of all pregnancies end in induced abortion. Abortion is safe when carried out using a method recommended by WHO, appropriate to the pregnancy duration and by someone with the necessary skills. However, when women with unwanted pregnancies face barriers to obtaining quality abortion, they often resort to unsafe abortion.
When a woman gets a pregnancy terminated voluntarily from a service provider, it is called induced abortion. Spontaneous abortion also known as miscarriage, is the loss of a woman's pregnancy before the 20th week. This type of abortion can be physically and emotionally painful.
Unsafe abortion was defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as "a procedure for termination of a pregnancy done by an individual who does not have the necessary training or in an environment not conforming to minimal medical standards." However, with abortion technology now becoming safer, this has been replaced by a three-tier classification of safe, less safe, and least safe permitting a more nuanced description of the spectrum of varying situations that constitute unsafe abortion and the increasingly widespread substitution of dangerous, invasive methods with the use of misoprostol outside the formal health system.
- Safe abortion: provided by healthcare workers and with methods recommended by the WHO.
- Less-safe abortion: done by trained providers using non-recommended methods or using a safe method (e.g. misoprostol) but without adequate information or support from a trained individual.
- Least-safe abortion: done by a trained provider using dangerous, invasive methods.
Abortion incidence in IndiaEdit
A study in 2018 estimated that 15.6 million abortions took place in India in 2015. A significant proportion of these are expected to be unsafe. Unsafe abortion is the third largest cause of maternal mortality leading to death of 10 women each day and thousands more facing morbidities. There is a need to strengthen women's access to CAC services and preventing deaths and disabilities faced by them.
The last large-scale study on induced abortion in India was conducted in 2002 as part of the Abortion Assessment Project. The studies as part of this project estimated 6.4 million abortions annually in India.
- When continuation of pregnancy is a risk to the life of a pregnant woman or could cause grave injury to her physical or mental health;
- When there is substantial risk that the child, if born or dead would be seriously handicapped due to physical or mental abnormalities;
- When pregnancy is caused due to rape (presumed to cause grave injury to the mental health of the woman);
- When pregnancy is caused due to failure of contraceptives used by a married woman or her husband (presumed to constitute grave injury to mental health of the woman).
Therefore all must be aware of health condition of a women and try to reduce all the certain cases increasing day by day in country.
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