Ipas is a non-profit making, nongovernmental organization that works around the world including Ethiopia to increase women’s ability to exercise their sexual and reproductive rights, especially the right to safe abortion and contraception. In more than 20 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, Ipas works in partnership with diverse stakeholders to carry out different interventions. Ipas is planning to re-envision its strategies and needed opinions and feedbacks from its partners.

Ethiopia made a significant progress in addressing maternal death over the last decades. The maternal mortality rate decreased from 871 per 100,000 in 2000 to 401 per 100,000 in 2017.1,Direct obstetric complications account for 85% of the deaths.2 Evidence indicates that unsafe abortion accounted for 10% of avoidable maternal deaths.3 Ipas Ethiopia node is among the leading players in Ethiopia’s journey towards ensuring access to quality comprehensive abortion care and contraceptive services. Over the past two decades, Ipas in collaboration with the MoH and other partners become a leader in expanding safe abortion services creating conducive environment for women and young girls to have access to SRH information and services. It has implemented wide arrays of programs including training of health workforce on comprehensive abortion care and contraceptive service provision; enhancing the capacity of health program managers on program coordination and support; expanding quality CAC and CC services at health facilities, equipping health facilities with essential supplies, and provision of support for minor renovations; advocacy and community engagement. In this document, the contribution of Ipas Ethiopia node in terms of expanding comprehensive abortion care and comprehensive contraception information and services in Ethiopia is presented.

Ipas has played a significant role in the expansion of access to comprehensive abortion and contraceptive care services in Ethiopia. After long years of providing capacity building training to service health professionals, conducting post-training follow-up and support, and equipping the health facilities with essential supplies and commodities as well as minor renovations, Ipas has devised and implemented a strategy to graduate the matured and seasoned health care facilities. This study was designed to assess the provision of Comprehensive Abortion Care and Comprehensive Contraceptive services in graduated public health facilities.

Unsafe abortion is a major public health problem globally contributing to significant proportion of maternal mortality in developing countries. Each year an estimated 36 million to 53 million abortions are performed worldwide. Of this, around 20 million are considered unsafe. In Ethiopia 382,000 induced abortions occurred in 2008 and abortion rate was 23 per 1,000 women in reproductive age. The unfavorable attitude of health care providers is one of the challenges to making the services accessible and available to women and girls. The study provides inputs on issues that need to be addressed with regard to the unfavorable attitude of health care providers rendering the safe abortion services and helps to inform the magnitude of unfavorable attitudes towards abortion among health care providers, associated factors, resistance of providers and the stigma associated with providing the services.

This toolkit is a resource for trainers, program managers and technical advisors who organize or facilitate training events and advocacy workshops in the field of sexual and reproductive health and, specifically, for increased access to safe abortion care. It is designed to provide experienced facilitators with the background information, materials, instructions and tips necessary to effectively facilitate abortion values clarification and attitude transformation (VCAT) interventions. There are also activities and materials to conduct a workshop to help experienced trainers increase their skills in facilitating abortion VCAT training events