Towards a gender-transformative approach to abortion : Legislative perspectives from South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa

Across several countries in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, the significant need to address gender-based health inequities by minimising unsafe abortions and preventable maternal deaths has helped pave the way towards abortion law reform. The maternal health focus of these developments, however, has invariably mainstreamed legal approaches that over-medicalised abortion and prioritised health targets instead of broader human rights standards. The resulting abortion-related legal frameworks continue to rely on criminalisation and have failed to ensure the change that a broader rights-based, and particularly gender-transformative, approach would have enabled. Utilising four country case studies from Nepal, India, Kenya and Rwanda – where abortion law reform has been significant and has, in some cases, yielded clearly positive outcomes – this chapter argues that ensuring meaningful access to abortion requires fully decriminalising abortion. Only through this approach can states tackle the underlying power dynamics and structures which reinforce gendered inequalities and abortion-related stigma.