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Mandatory pre-abortion counseling is a barrier to accessing safe abortion services

Empirical research showcases that pre-abortion counseling scarcely reverses the woman’s decision either to terminate a pregnancy or not. Growing evidence regarding the high levels of decisional certainty among women seeking abortions renders a careful rethink of the place of mandatory pre-abortion c...

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Autor principal: Bain, Luchuo Engelbert
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The African Field Epidemiology Network 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7250210/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32537083
http://dx.doi.org/10.11604/pamj.2020.35.80.22043
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author Bain, Luchuo Engelbert
author_facet Bain, Luchuo Engelbert
author_sort Bain, Luchuo Engelbert
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description Empirical research showcases that pre-abortion counseling scarcely reverses the woman’s decision either to terminate a pregnancy or not. Growing evidence regarding the high levels of decisional certainty among women seeking abortions renders a careful rethink of the place of mandatory pre-abortion counseling packages. Mandatory counseling packages, when inscribed in the laws, at times contain false information that can deter women from going in for safe abortions. Mandatory waiting times indirectly label opting for an abortion as not being the right thing to do. In areas where abortion stigma from health care providers and communities remains highly prevalent, women are forced to incur extra expenses by travelling to other countries. I argue that pre-abortion counseling on opting-in grounds is ethically sound (enhances the woman’s reproductive autonomy), since most clients in need of abortions are certain on their decisions before the abortion care provider and do not regret these decisions after the process. Regrets are prone to be more prevalent in areas with high unsafe abortion practices, generally due to complications from excessive bleeding, pain, and post abortion infections. Allowing systematic mandatory pre-abortion counseling practice as the rule in a competent adult is unjustified ethically and empirically, is time consuming and presents the legality of abortions in most settings an oxymoron.
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spelling pubmed-72502102020-06-11 Mandatory pre-abortion counseling is a barrier to accessing safe abortion services Bain, Luchuo Engelbert Pan Afr Med J Essay Empirical research showcases that pre-abortion counseling scarcely reverses the woman’s decision either to terminate a pregnancy or not. Growing evidence regarding the high levels of decisional certainty among women seeking abortions renders a careful rethink of the place of mandatory pre-abortion counseling packages. Mandatory counseling packages, when inscribed in the laws, at times contain false information that can deter women from going in for safe abortions. Mandatory waiting times indirectly label opting for an abortion as not being the right thing to do. In areas where abortion stigma from health care providers and communities remains highly prevalent, women are forced to incur extra expenses by travelling to other countries. I argue that pre-abortion counseling on opting-in grounds is ethically sound (enhances the woman’s reproductive autonomy), since most clients in need of abortions are certain on their decisions before the abortion care provider and do not regret these decisions after the process. Regrets are prone to be more prevalent in areas with high unsafe abortion practices, generally due to complications from excessive bleeding, pain, and post abortion infections. Allowing systematic mandatory pre-abortion counseling practice as the rule in a competent adult is unjustified ethically and empirically, is time consuming and presents the legality of abortions in most settings an oxymoron. The African Field Epidemiology Network 2020-03-19 /pmc/articles/PMC7250210/ /pubmed/32537083 http://dx.doi.org/10.11604/pamj.2020.35.80.22043 Text en © Luchuo Engelbert Bain et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ The Pan African Medical Journal - ISSN 1937-8688. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Essay
Bain, Luchuo Engelbert
Mandatory pre-abortion counseling is a barrier to accessing safe abortion services
title Mandatory pre-abortion counseling is a barrier to accessing safe abortion services
title_full Mandatory pre-abortion counseling is a barrier to accessing safe abortion services
title_fullStr Mandatory pre-abortion counseling is a barrier to accessing safe abortion services
title_full_unstemmed Mandatory pre-abortion counseling is a barrier to accessing safe abortion services
title_short Mandatory pre-abortion counseling is a barrier to accessing safe abortion services
title_sort mandatory pre-abortion counseling is a barrier to accessing safe abortion services
topic Essay
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7250210/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32537083
http://dx.doi.org/10.11604/pamj.2020.35.80.22043
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