Toward Human Rights and Evidence-Based Legal Frameworks for (Self-Managed) Abortion: A Review of the Last Decade of Legal Reform

Abstract

Since the late 1980s, people have safely self-managed their abortions with medication, changing the landscape of abortion. This practice continues to evolve and expand and has been identified as a cause of decline in severe abortion-related morbidity and mortality. However, developments in medical abortion and self-management have yet to be reflected in the way abortion is regulated. Building on the need for evidence and human rights-based laws, this article explores developments in abortion laws from around the world between 2010 and 2020 to explore the extent to which they have contributed to an enabling environment for self-managed abortion. We focus on recent laws—those adopted in the past 10 years—for which we had access to information for analysis. We observe that laws in force still retain clinical settings and the involvement of medical professionals as the desirable circumstances for an abortion to take place and that even those that have liberalized access still retain some degree of criminalization for the pregnant person who carries out a self-managed abortion or for those who support the process. We conclude that there is enough evidence and support from international human rights standards to ground legal developments that enable self-managed abortion.