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Access to Safe Abortion A Medical Students’ Perspective
Alan Ricardo Patlán Hernández IFMSA - Mexico
a.patlan@outlook.com
Over the past two decades, the health evidence, technologies and human rights rationale for providing safe, comprehensive abortion care have evolved greatly. Despite these advances, an estimated 22 million abortions continue to be performed unsafely each year, resulting in the death of an estimated 47 000 women and disabilities for an additional 5 million women. This is particularly disturbing because unsafe abortion is the only cause of maternal mortality that is entirely preventable. Almost every one of these deaths and disabilities could have been prevented through sexuality education, family planning, and the provision of safe, legal induced abortion and care for complications of abortion. In 2015, acknowledging the importance of abortion worldwide, we designed a survey in order to know the current situation and the stand of medical students in México regarding this issue, with the ultimate goal of proposing viable solutions through activities of our National Member Organization and its Standing Committees.
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Of the 132 medical students belonging to 64 different universities member of IFMSA Mexico who responded to the survey, half of them women; 28.1% consider that the main cause of unintended pregnancy in Mexico is the low educational level and the 20.8% consider that it is caused by the lack of information about sexual and reproductive health among the society; furthermore 59% believe that the main cause of abortion in Mexico is due to the young age of women who become pregnant and 50% believe it is due to pregnancy resulting from sexual abuse.
abortion; 24.2% consider it is due to the unfavorable economic conditions of many women, and 17.9% consider it is due to the lack of information. In conclusion, 35.9% believe that access to safe abortion can be guaranteed by ensuring access to health services for all women and 27.2% believe can be done by generating government policies and reliable information available to the entire population. According to the results, the majority of medical students involved is this work think that the main causes of unsafe abortion practices are conditions and problems concerning the socio-cultural and economic contexts in Mexico. Furthermore, most of the students believe that some of the pillars of the solution remain incomplete or uncovered since information about abortion and sexual and reproductive health still has poor distribution and scope, and much of the current information has few filters of quality and reliability. tAcknowledging the current situation regarding abortion in Mexico, medical students recognizes that actions to improve and solve the problems concerning this issue should be proposed, urged and done wisely and promptly. All of this taking action in different areas, with the ultimate goal of ensure access to information and health services of high quality, thus guaranteeing access to safe abortion or preventing some of the causes that lead to require the practice of abortion.
Regarding unsafe and clandestine abortion, 33.7% of the students consider it is practiced due to the lack of legislations that allow and ensure the access to safe medical students worldwide | AM 2016, Mexico