Task Sharing in Abortion Care in Latin America, by Dana Repka

June 10, 2026:

Task Sharing in Abortion Care in Latin America, by Dana Repka

Congratulations to Dana Repka, LL.M., whose new article on “Task Sharing in Abortion Care in Latin America” is now published in the “Ethical and Legal Issues in Reproductive Health” section of the International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics and freely accessible online. Dana Repka currently serves as a Research Associate for the International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law Program of the University of Toronto’s Jackman Faculty of Law.

Dana Repka, Task Sharing in Abortion Care in Latin America, International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics;172.3 (March 2026):1810–1822.
PDF at Wiley Online – view or download.

Synopsis:
Restrictive provider regulations undermine abortion access in Latin America. This is unjustifiable because task sharing is a clinically safe, rights-based obligation for expanding equitable care.

Abstract:
Unsafe abortion remains a major public health and human rights challenge in Latin America, despite recent reforms that have expanded the legal grounds for abortion in several countries. A central reason for the persistent gap between law and access is the region’s widespread reliance on physician-exclusive provider models, which structurally limits the availability of services, particularly in rural, Indigenous, and primary-care settings where specialists are scarce. “Task sharing” is a public-health strategy that redistributes the tasks involved in abortion care among a broader range of health workers—midwives, nurses, pharmacists, community health workers, and others—thereby increasing the number of professionals who can safely provide abortion care. This has a direct impact on service delivery: it reduces travel and waiting times, shifts appropriate components of care away from physicians, expands availability of services in rural and primary-care settings, helps prevent unsafe self-management of abortion, and lowers overall health-system costs. Task sharing in abortion care should be understood not as a discretionary efficiency strategy, but as an essential component of States’ obligations under legal rights to health care, equality, life, and scientific progress. A review of global evidence, a comparative analysis of legal and regulatory frameworks in fourteen countries, and an in-depth examination of emerging reforms in Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, and Ecuador show that expanding provider eligibility is both clinically safe and normatively required. The conclusion outlines a regional reform agenda for aligning domestic regulations with WHO standards.

The full text of this article is freely available here: PDF Online.

Keywords: Abortion; Health providers; Human rights; Latin America; Primary health care; Task sharing; Task shifting.

RELATED RESOURCES

“The WHO Abortion Care Guideline . . . recommends that both medical and surgical abortion can be provided by a wide range of trained healthcare professionals.” See Recommendations 24, 28, 30, and 33; Recommendation 21 advises against restrictive regulations. WHO Abortion Care Guideline (2022).

“Guyana: Midwives, nurses and pharmacists can provide abortion pill” 2016 Guyana blog post

Ethical and Legal Issues in Reproductive Health series: 100+ concise articles online here.
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