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Panel on Abortion (2006-2010)
Call for papers
International Seminar on
The Health, Social and Economic Consequences of Unsafe Abortion
Organized by the IUSSP Scientific Panel on Abortion
and Population Council’s Mexico and Guatemala offices
Antigua, Guatemala, 10-12 November 2010
The objective of this seminar is to document, stimulate and advance research on the consequences of unsafe abortion, by bringing together researchers who are working on different aspects of this topic. The seminar will provide an opportunity for researchers to present results from new studies, propose new approaches and methodologies, assess the advantages and disadvantages of existing methodologies and to advance and guide future work in this area. Additional aims of the seminar are to increase networking between researchers and to facilitate linkages and coordination across disciplines, countries and research institutions.
Unsafe abortion, from the body of research available so far, has been found to have a large impact on women’s health and welfare, and also on the economic well-being of households. At the community and national levels, it can also consume scarce health resources and burden health systems. The disparity in access to safe abortion is an important social equity issue: in almost every country, wealthy women have access to safe abortion regardless of its legal status, while poor and disadvantaged women are more likely to experience health, social and economic consequences.
Research on health consequences is somewhat more developed than that on social and economic consequences. However for all three of these consequences, there is great need to improve research methodologies, develop estimation techniques and modeling approaches and increase the body of empirical evidence. Existing work has used quantitative and qualitative research approaches, and community-based as well as hospital-based designs. Evidence on the consequences of unsafe abortion is critical for policymakers, providers and advocates seeking to mobilize resources to improve the situation.
This seminar will cover the following topics:
Health consequences
• Maternal mortality, morbidity, severity of morbidities and hospitalization resulting from unsafe abortion.
• Provision of medical care to women with abortion complications; the extent and quality of postabortion care and does it differ across the public, private and NGO sectors.
• Methods women use, providers they access and relative level of safety of clandestine abortion. What are the factors associated with access to unsafe and safe abortion? How have conditions been changing over time?
• Delay in obtaining treatment for postabortion complications; factors that influence whether and how quickly women seek treatment.
• To what extent is available cost-effective abortion technology actually used for postabortion treatment, including manual vacuum aspiration (MVA) and new abortion drug regimens (misoprostol alone and in combination with mifepristone)? To what extent are these technologies reducing abortion-related morbidity and mortality, by providing greater scope for the delivery of safer abortion services in rural areas and other low-resource settings, and for the use of a wider array of health professionals to reach under-served populations cost-effectively? <
Social consequences
• The negative social consequences of unsafe abortion on children and other family members (when women are sick or die from abortion complications); variation in this impact across population groups and countries.
• Stigma related to abortion itself (safe or unsafe); stigma related to secondary infertility that may result from unsafe abortion; sources of stigma (family, community, providers).
• Psychological consequences (including consequences of poor access to safe abortion, of being refused an abortion, of having an unsafe abortion, and of having a safe abortion).
• Women's attitudes, fears, anxieties and opinions about unwanted pregnancy and unsafe abortion; the impact of unsafe abortion on other life events; parents' attitudes towards their adolescent children with unwanted pregnancy/abortion.
•The role of men in supporting or creating barriers to women who want to end a pregnancy; power dynamics within relationships; domestic violence; divorce.
• The consequences of barriers to safe abortion services in countries where the procedure is legal under broad criteria (permitted for socio-economic reasons or without restriction as to reason).
• The positive social consequences of access to abortion (school continuation, welfare of existing children).
Economic consequences
• Empirical studies on the costs of unsafe abortion to the individual, family, community and national health systems; direct costs of medical treatment.
• Models for estimating the full range of costs of unsafe abortion—direct (to the individual, family, community and national health systems) and indirect (including short- and long-term impact on women, households or society).
• What are the comparative costs of provision of services for treatment of abortion complications vs. elective abortion?
• How does the cost of unsafe abortion compare to other health costs (such as provision of contraceptive services)?
Papers may be country-specific or comparative, quantitative and/or qualitative. This international seminar will bring together demographers, public health specialists, sociologists and anthropologists, as well as scholars from other related disciplines interested in exchanging the latest scientific knowledge on the consequences of unsafe abortion.
The IUSSP Scientific Panel on Abortion invites researchers in the field to submit a detailed 500-1000 word abstract (and if the author(s) wish, a full paper which must be unpublished and not submitted for publication) and fill out the online submission form before March 31, 2010.
Deadline for abstract: 31 March 2010.
Applicants will be informed whether paper is accepted by: 15 April 2010.
Participants must submit their complete paper by: 30 September 2010.
The seminar will be limited to about 20 contributed papers. If the paper is co-authored, please indicate the names of co-authors at the end of the abstract. Submission should be made by the author who will attend the seminar.
Abstracts and papers may be submitted in English, French or Spanish. However, the working language of the meeting is English, and presentations must be made in English.
In addition to dissemination through posting on the member-restricted portion of the IUSSP website, seminar organizers will explore possibilities for publishing the papers, after the seminar.
Current funding for the seminar is very limited; efforts are under way to raise additional funds, but the outcome is at this point uncertain. Participants are therefore encouraged to seek their own funding to cover the cost of their participation in the seminar. Those who are applying for financial assistance from the IUSSP should indicate their need when they submit by ticking the appropriate box on the on-line submission form when submitting their paper or abstract. The IUSSP expects to inform applicants of the status of their application for financial support before the end of August 2010. However, funding is contingent upon submission of a complete paper of acceptable quality by the deadline for papers.
For further information, please contact Susheela Singh (ssingh@guttmacher.org).
IUSSP Scientific Panel on Abortion:
Chair: Susheela Singh (Guttmacher Institute, USA); Members: Sandy Garcia (Population Council, Mexico); Hailemichael Gebreselassie (Ipas, Ethiopia); Agnes Guillaume (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, France); Ali Mohamed Mir (Population Council, Pakistan); Friday Okonofua (Women’s Health and Action Research Centre, Nigeria); Ndola Prata (School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley).
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