International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics

Working Group for the Prevention of Unsafe Abortion
chaired by Professor Anibal Faúndes

Professor Anibal Faúndes

Approved Terms of Reference

•To understand the extent to which unsafe abortion poses health risks to women in the member countries/territories of FIGO, and the policy and service delivery factors that need to be addressed to reduce the size of the problem.

•To build national and international consensus for overcoming the constraints to providing evidence-based methods for reducing the burden of unsafe abortion.

•To increase awareness of Ob/gyn professionals about their ethical obligations to increase women’s access to evidence-based methods and solutions for reducing the burden of unsafe abortion.

•To develop situational analyses on unsafe abortion in FIGO’s member countries and territories.

•To organise national workshops to construct plans of action to reduce unsafe abortion, based on the results of the situational analyses.

•To organise regional workshops to develop collaboration between countries and territories.

•To follow up on the implementation of national/regional plans for reducing the burden of unsafe abortion.

•To identify potential areas of collaboration and engagement between Ob/gyn professionals with other stakeholders in the civil society; to promote and advance women's access to safe abortion and post-abortion services; and

•To develop – in consultation with allied organisations such as IPPF, ICM, WHO, UNFPA and Ipas – statements, position papers, guidelines and policy documents on the following topics:
 - Education and evidence-based information provided to women
 - Creating awareness on evidence-based methods of contraception (in collaboration with other professional associations, such as midwifery and nursing associations)
 - The empowerment of women
 - Documenting and obtaining country specific data on unsafe abortion, needed for specific actions within individual countries and territories
 - Advocacy by FIGO to national societies, and advocacy by national societies to their local policymakers and communities
 - Promotion of pre-service training on methods of managing safe abortion and the complications of unsafe abortion, and the decentralization of these procedures to mid-level providers.
 - Exchange of experiences on abortion between FIGO member countries and territories

•Membership should be multi-national, multi-cultural, and possibly multi-disciplinary.  Ideally, it should be drawn from countries with different experiences on abortion – from countries that have always had liberal abortion laws, those who moved from a regime of restrictive laws to more liberal laws, and those who have always had different forms of abortion restrictions. This will encourage exchange of information and views within the group.  While the group should encourage diversity of opinion among the group members, we believe that extremists on both sides should be excluded in order not to derail the work of the Group.

•The Group should include one or two non-FIGO members with long standing experience working on unsafe abortion.  A good representation by women would also be critical. .

•The Working Group should work in collaboration with the FIGO Committee on Women Sexual and Reproductive Rights, but should be independent of the Committee and should report directly to the FIGO Officers and the Executive Board.

Members 2009-2012:

Professor Anibal Faúndes (Chair)
Brazil

Dr Shahida Zaidi
Pakistan

Dr Stelian Hodorogea
Moldova

Professor Robert Leke
Cameroon

Dr Joseph Karanja
Kenya

Dr Luis Tavara
Peru

Professor Ezzeldin Osman Hassan
Egypt

Dr Marina Padilla de Gil
El Salvador

Dr Kristine Gemzell
Sweden

Dr Dorothy Shaw
Canada

Dr Iqbal Shah
Switzerland

Partner organisations

Dr Nguyen-Toan Tran
IPPF
UK

Dr Nuriye Ortayli
UNFPA
USA

Dr Rodolfo Gomez Ponce de Leon
IPAS
USA

Dr Sadia Chowdhury
World Bank
USA

Ms Stephanie Schilt
Amnesty International
UK