WHAT WE DO: Abortion/Postabortion Care
Unsafe abortion is a critical public health concern in many developing countries, causing the deaths of tens of thousands of women worldwide each year. Where abortion is illegal or where safe abortion services are costly or hard to find, complications from an unsafe abortion are common. Working both in countries where abortion is legal and where it is illegal, Pathfinder International supports postabortion care projects designed to make treatment safer and more responsive to the needs of women.
As a founding member of the Postabortion Care Consortium, Pathfinder helped to develop the concept of postabortion care as an important, emerging area of reproductive health. Quality postabortion care includes emergency treatment, contraceptive counseling and supplies, and follow up and referral to other reproductive health services.
Pathfinder believes that while all women should have access to safe abortion services, the key to reducing reliance on abortion--whether legal or illegal--is providing women with the means to safely control their fertility.
featured Projects
IPPF Safe Abortion Action Fund: A two-year grant from the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) supporting safe abortion activities in Ghana, India, Mozambique and South Africa.
Youth-Friendly Postabortion Care: A one-year project addressing unsafe abortion among adolescent women in Angola, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Uganda.
Ghana: Safe Abortion Services: Improving access to and quality of comprehensive abortion care services in select facilities in Ghana, with a focus on the northern region of the country.
India: Access to Safe Abortion: Working to improve women’s access to safe abortion and improve community awareness of healthy behaviors surrounding the termination of pregnancy.
Mozambique: Postabortion Care: Expanding access to comprehensive postabortion care services for women, including counseling, treatment, family planning methods, and follow-up.
Featured Publication
Improved Access to Safe Abortion Care: Karnataka, India: Between June 2003 and June 2006, Pathfinder International undertook the Improved Access to Safe Abortion Care project (IASAC), in Karnataka, India, an innovative program designed to improve the quality of abortion training for medical students, and improve the skills of a significant number of current abortion providers at the community level. Over the course of the project, 21 faculty/master trainers were trained. They, in turn, trained a total of 318 providers—two practitioners in each of 49 towns in 7 districts. Pathfinder has now trained 17 percent of the best-known abortion providers in the districts covered, who currently perform 60 percent of all abortions in these districts.
More Publications: Abortion/Postabortion Care 
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