The Clandestine epidemic: the practice of unsafe abortion in Latin America

This article addresses how unsafe abortion might be challenged. Recommendations include providing safer outpatient treatment and strengthening family planning programs to improve women's contraceptive use and their access to information and to safe pregnancy termination procedures. In addition, existing laws and policies governing legal abortion can be applied to their fullest extent, indications for legal abortion can be more broadly interpreted, and legal constraints on abortion practices can be officially relaxed. The article includes some discussion of international legal standards. [Descriptors: Reproductive Rights - Abortion, International]