Asia: Expanding the base of abortion providers

March 11, 2025:

Congratulations and thanks to Professor Dipika Jain, whose new article on “Legal Challenges in Expanding the Provider Base for Abortion in Asia” outlines the legal and policy reforms necessary to expand the provider base in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Nepal according to the 2022 WHO Abortion Care Guideline. The author is a Professor of Law, Vice Dean of Research and Clinical Legal Education and the Director of the Centre for Justice, Law and Society (CJLS) at Jindal Global Law School (JGLS) in India. Her article has been published in the “Ethical and Legal Issues in Reproductive Health” section of the International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics, co-edited by Professors Rebecca J. Cook, Bernard Dickens, and Charles Ngwena, and is now freely available. We are pleased to circulate the following abstract:

Dipika Jain, Legal Challenges in Expanding the Provider Base for Abortion in Asia, International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics.168.3 (March 2025) 1345-1351. PDF at Wiley Online.

Abstract: In Asia as elsewhere, strict regulations on who is authorized to provide abortion services and to prescribe or dispense medical abortion adversely impact access, especially for marginalized persons and residents in remote areas. The 2022 Abortion Care Guideline of the World Health Organization (WHO) provides an important framework for states to formulate and implement policies to serve sexual and reproductive rights of access to abortion services. The Guideline calls for decriminalization of abortion services to increase authorization to provide abortion services and to promote self-managed medical abortion. This review examines the legal and policy frameworks of Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Nepal against the WHO Guideline. Legal and policy reforms successfully introduced in Bangladesh and Nepal to grow the provider base allow healthcare systems to expand safe abortion. This review outlines further challenges where the WHO Guideline on decriminalization and availability of medical abortion is disregarded and advocates a reproductive justice approach promoting egalitarian access to services even among the most marginalized.

Key Words: Safe abortion, abortion provider base, reproductive justice, medical abortion, WHO Abortion Care Guideline, Asian abortion laws, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal.

RELATED RESOURCES:

World Health Organization’s Abortion Care Guideline, 2022, is online here.

Ethical and Legal Issues in Reproductive Health: more than 110 concise articles are online here..

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Contributed by: The International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law Program, reprohealth*law at utoronto.ca. See Program website for our Publications, Research resources, and Reprohealthlaw Commentaries Series. TO JOIN THE REPROHEALTHLAW BLOG: enter your email address in the upper right corner of this blog, then check your email box to confirm.

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