Women Deliver is a global advocacy agency that works to improve the lives and health of women worldwide. It hopes to help countries reach the Millennium Development Goals through political commitment and financial investments geared towards programs that guarantee universal access to health and show commitment to reducing high maternal mortality rates.

As is well known, unsafe abortion is responsible for 13% of the global maternal deaths. About 98% of these deaths take place in the global south. Studies also show that the rates of deaths from unsafe abortion are highest in countries that criminalize abortion or have very stringent abortion laws. 25% of the world’s women live in some such country.

Women Deliver is conducting its third global conference in Kuala Lumpur between May 28 and May 30 this year. ASAP and many of its members, including four youth advocates are attending this meeting.

You can interact with the ASAP staff at any of the sessions on safe abortion, but our coordinator Dr. Dalvie will be speaking in the following sessions:

1. Outing and Addressing Abortion Stigma
11:30am-1:00pm, Room 406, Panel

Description: Abortion stigma remains one of the biggest hurdles to access to safe abortion care. What can we learn from other stigmatized issues like HIV?  How can we measure stigma and how does it affect women, providers, and services?  What interventions to address stigma work?

Speakers/Moderator: Suchitra Dalvie (Asia Safe Abortion Partnership), Gilda Sedgh (Guttmacher), Maria Mejia (Catolicas por el Derecho a Decidir), Joy Rugasira (CEHURD), Arzu Rana Deuba (Safe abortion motherhood network federation of Nepal)

Contact: Kelly Blanchard at kblanchard@ibisreproductivehealth.org

2. Building on current momentum and lessons learned:  Case studies in successful advocacy to expand access to safe abortion
11:00am-1:00pm, Room 405, Panel

Description: We have a few recent examples of positive policy changes and increased access to safe abortion.  How can we harness this momentum, learn the important lessons from pioneer countries and adapt successful strategies to diverse contexts?  What worked where policies have changed? What or who were the driving forces?

Speakers/Moderator: Fred Sai, Nehemiah Kimathi (IPPF), Asifa Khanum (Rahnuma-FP association Pakistan), Suchitra Dalvie (Asia Safe Abortion Partnership), Monica Oguttu (KMET), Leila Hessini (Ipas)

Contact: Kelly Blanchard at kblanchard@ibisreproductivehealth.org

She will also be speaking at the pre-conference debate on safe abortion to be held on May 27.

Also, the International Campaign For Women’s Right to Safe Abortion is turning one year old. We hope you have already endorsed it. If not do take this survey which won’t take more than 2 minutes of your time. Link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CHH62F5 Once you’ve endorsed it, do come meet us, and get a keychain with the campaign’s logo and ours on it.

If you have not yet heard about it, please find us at Women Deliver, and come talk to us about the campaign, what we hope to achieve and how you can contribute.

We also have some new media for you: a film on abortion stigma, which we hope you will share widely with your networks!

You can get in touch with us while at the conference or all of this month on

You can get in touch with us while at the conference or all of this month on discussions.asap@gmail.com or on Twitter @asapasia, or through Facebook: www.facebook.com/AsiaSafeAbortionPartnership

We hope to meet you soon!