WHO Calls for Removal of Any Law Limiting Abortion

By | January 5, 2023

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 6 (C-Fam) The World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended the removal of any legal or policy standard that might impede access to abortion, at any stage of pregnancy, and for any reason.

Building on its technical guideline on “safe abortion” published earlier last year, the WHO released a policy brief on establishing a “supportive law and policy environment” for abortion.

The first recommendation is the full decriminalization of abortion.  In many countries, abortion is regarded a criminal offense, with exceptions in specific circumstances, such as rape, threats to the health or life of the mother, or fetal complications.  The WHO calls on countries to completely remove abortion from criminal law, including by ensuring that laws against fetal manslaughter or endangerment are not used in cases of abortion.

The WHO also discourages “grounds-based approaches” in which abortion is legal under specific circumstances, and instead recommends that abortion “be available on the request of the woman, girl or other pregnant person.”  Gestational age limits are also discouraged, as is conscientious objection by health care providers, as they “pose barriers to access to abortion and have negative effects on the exercise of human rights.”

The WHO also recommends against mandatory waiting periods and third-party authorization, or the requirement of approval by a panel of doctors or a judge, parent, or spouse prior to an abortion.

Countries are urged to not restrict “who can provide and manage abortion” in a way “that is inconsistent with WHO guidance.”  The UN health agency’s guidance on who can provide abortion has continuously expanded, encompassing doctors, nurses, midwives, pharmacists prescribing abortion pills, and even pregnant women themselves under the name of “self-care.”

Not only are a wide range of health care providers considered by the WHO to be capable of providing abortions, but they may find themselves forbidden to say no; the guidance recommends that “comprehensive abortion care be protected against barriers created by conscientious objection.”

Further affirming its commitment to ensuring that abortionists are not in short supply, the WHO published a two-part toolkit on family planning and “comprehensive abortion care” training in health worker education.  In addition to ensuring that they learn medical skills, the toolkit focuses on ensuring they have the “right” attitudes.  One aspect of this is “values clarification and attitudes transformation,” a term promoted by the abortion organization Ipas, which produces toolkits to break down health workers’ objections to providing abortions.

The WHO also seeks to embed abortion firmly within broader health systems.  The guidance notes that a potential barrier to accessing abortion is “failure to ensure sufficient funding for provision of abortion care through public health systems” as well as “facility-level policy that is more restrictive than the law.”  This could apply to both secular and religious hospitals and clinics, particularly those operated by religious institutions that oppose abortion, such as Catholic providers that operate around the world and provide necessary care to many of the poorest people in the world.

In its earlier abortion guideline, published in March of last year, the WHO recommended “prohibiting institutional claims of conscience” entirely.

In all of this, the WHO continues to ignore the global consensus from 1994, where nations agreed that abortion is not a human right, and that the legal status of abortion is solely for national governments to determine.

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