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Self-Managed Abortion

We’re dedicated to increasing access to safe abortion and supporting the right of women and girls to use abortion pills independently, at their chosen time and place. We’re also exploring marginalized areas where self-care is implemented to better meet everyone’s preferences and needs.
Self-managed abortion is an abortion with pills with and without a prescription, and with or without the support of health care professionals. Self-managed abortion is on the rise globally due to the increasing availability of simple, safe, highly effective medications that meet people’s needs for safe abortion on their own terms. Research and evidence show that people can safely and effectively self-manage an abortion with pills when they have accurate information about the dosing regimen and when to seek treatment for complications. Our research found that a lot of women and girls went straight to a private clinic or pharmacy to get medication abortion (MA) and took it at home or elsewhere outside a clinic. However, almost everyone got little guidance on how to take MA properly, and all the women in our study ended up needing post-abortion care because of worries about symptoms, mostly heavier bleeding than expected.

Seeing the potential of SMA to vastly expand access to safe abortion care, we conducted a pilot initiative to expand access to SMA through private pharmacies. We supported 1,657 self-managed abortions; nearly all (98.2%) resulted in a complete abortion. The pilot demonstrated the demand for and feasibility of increasing access to safe, high-quality SMA through pharmacies in Ethiopia. We continue to implement pilot interventions and generate new evidence, share knowledge to influence policies, and advocate for the inclusion of having an abortion with the support of trained pharmacists within this rapidly evolving area. We strive to improve the legal framework for self-managed abortion, including laws, policies, and guidelines. We work in communities to train clinical and non-clinical providers who are already supporting self-managed abortion. And we support women and girls to have safe options they need to manage their reproductive lives.

Our Impact

We supported 62 access points for self-managed abortion with pills