From Patna to Paris: Providing safe and humane abortion

With access to safe, legal abortion under severe constraint or debate in many parts of the world, less attention has been paid to the issue of quality of abortion care. This issue of Quality/Calidad/Qualité explores two programs that operate in very different settings but with a shared commitment to providing high-quality abortion care in a context of broader reproductive health services: the Clinique d’Orthogénie of Broussais Hospital in France and Parivar Seva Sanstha in India. In both programs, each woman or girl who arrives for abortion receives crucial basic care, including: appropriate medical treatment to ensure complete abortion and safe recovery; if medically appropriate, choice about issues such as anesthesia and/or method of abortion; supportive counseling; and a range of related reproductive health services. The lessons learned from these two programs that emphasize safety, choice, and compassion remind us that there is no reason for an abortion to cause suffering