Population Briefs | December 2007, Vol. 13, No. 3 | Council Works to Reduce Unsafe Abortion in Mexico

December 2007, Vol. 13, No. 3

Reproductive Health
Council Works to Reduce Unsafe Abortion in Mexico

In April 2007, Mexico City’s legislative assembly voted to liberalize abortion law to permit the interruption of pregnancy in the first trimester. The city is a federal district—similar to Washington, DC—and has a state-like autonomy. The law is in place only in Mexico City; Mexico’s states still have restrictive abortion laws. The Council’s research and collaboration with local nongovernmental organizations, universities, professional associations, and the Mexican government helped bring about this groundbreaking legislation.

“The Population Council’s research findings on abortion in Latin America have been used by government officials and women’s rights advocacy groups to shape evidence-based policies, including the recent change in abortion law in Mexico City,” says Sandra G. García, the Council’s director of reproductive health for Latin America and the Caribbean. In 2007, García was honored as a recipient of the Guttmacher Institute’s Darroch Award for Excellence in Sexual and Reproductive Health Research. She was cited for “research documenting abortion-related knowledge, attitudes, and practices in Mexico” that “played an important role in the…recent decision to legalize first-trimester abortion."

A commitment to women’s health
The latest data from the World Health Organization show that in 2003, 3.9 million women in Latin America and the Caribbean obtained unsafe abortions. Of these, 2,000 died as a result, a figure representing 11 percent of all maternal deaths. Recent data on the incidence of abortion in Mexico are lacking, but Population Council investigators are completing a study with colleagues at the Guttmacher Institute and the Colegio de México to obtain current estimates of abortion incidence. Population Council research from 2001 indicates that 16.3 percent of women in Mexico have had an abortion.

For more than a decade, Population Council staff members in Latin America have focused on reducing maternal mortality through abortion-related research and technical collaboration. The Council has become the preeminent source of abortion-related social science, epidemiological, and public health research in Mexico. Council staff have undertaken qualitative and quantitative opinion research on abortion, studies on the acceptability of medical abortion, and studies to quantify the contribution of unsafe abortion to maternal mortality and morbidity.

“Some of the most important and influential research we’ve done on this topic in Mexico was a set of national abortion opinion polls among the general Mexican population and with specific groups, such as physicians,” says Population Council consultant and former staff member Diana Lara, a researcher on many of the Council’s abortion studies.

A poll among Mexican physicians, conducted in 2002, showed that 84 percent of doctors felt that all public medical facilities in Mexico should offer legal abortions; however, only 11 percent of respondents said they had ever performed an abortion. A poll of the general population, conducted in 2000, showed that 79 percent of Mexicans felt that abortion should be legal in certain circumstances, such as when a woman’s life is at risk or her health is in danger.

Currently, the only situation in which abortion is permissible throughout Mexico is when a pregnancy results from rape. Council research conducted in 2002, however, has documented the multiple barriers that confront Mexican women who seek legal abortion after rape. These women face bureaucratic red tape, a shortage of doctors willing to perform abortions, and social and psychological barriers to reporting the rape.

Mexico City’s new law
The Ministry of Health in Mexico City estimates that between April 2007, when the new law was passed, and November 2007, physicians have carried out more than 3,000 abortions. However, while obtaining a first-trimester abortion has become much easier in Mexico City, hundreds of women who sought abortions since the law was passed were unable to get them. There is a shortage of doctors willing to perform the procedure, as well as misinformation and lack of knowledge among some doctors who are willing to do so.

“The biggest challenge facing the Ministry of Health now is training its medical personnel to perform less invasive procedures, such as standardizing the use of misoprostol-only medical abortion regimens, and dealing with the lack of staff generally, because of conscientious objections,” said García. “The Population Council will be working with Mexico City’s Secretary of Health to analyze data on the use of the procedure and the women who have received it.”

Sources
Van Dijk, M.D., D. Lara, and S.G. García. “Opinions of decision-makers on the liberalization of abortion laws in Mexico,” forthcoming in Revista Salud Pública de México.

Lara, Diana, Katrina Abuabara, Daniel Grossman, and Claudia Díaz-Olavarrieta. 2006. “Pharmacy provision of medical abortifacients in a Latin American city,” Contraception 74(5): 394–399. (offsite abstract)

Lara, Diana, Sandra G. García, Charlotte Ellertson, Carol Camlin, and Javier Suárez. 2006. “The measure of induced abortion levels in Mexico using random response technique,” Sociological Methods and Research 35(2): 279–301. (offsite abstract) (offsite PDF)

Lara, Diana, Sandra García, Olivia Ortiz, and Eileen A. Yam. 2006. “Challenges accessing legal abortion after rape in Mexico City,” Gaceta Médica de México 142(S2): 85–89.

García, Sandra G., Carrie Tatum, Davida Becker, Karen A. Swanson, Karin Lockwood, and Charlotte Ellertson. 2004. “Policy implications of a national public opinion survey on abortion in Mexico,” Reproductive Health Matters 12(S24): 65–74.

Lara, Diana, Jennifer Strickler, Claudia Díaz-Olavarrieta, and Charlotte Ellertson. 2004. “Measuring induced abortion in Mexico: A comparison of four methodologies,” Sociological Methods and Research 32(4): 529–558. (offsite abstract)

García, Sandra G., Diana Lara, and Lisa Goldman. 2003. “Conocimientos, actitudes y prácticas de los médicos mexicanos sobre el aborto: Resultados de una encuesta nacional,” Gaceta Médica de México 139(S1): S91–S102. (offsite abstract)

Becker, Davida, Sandra G. García, and Ulla Larsen. 2002. “Knowledge and opinions about abortion law among Mexican youth,” International Family Planning Perspectives 28(4): 205–213. (offsite full text) (offsite PDF)

Outside funding
Anonymous, General Service Foundation, Gynuity Health Projects, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation

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