User:Ecassel/sandbox

Ipas (Organization)
Around the world, about 44,000 women and young girls die, and millions of others live with serious injuries, due to unsafe abortion practices. Ipas is an international, nongovernmental organization whose sole focus it to work towards increasing access to safe abortions and contraception. The organization works by training partners in Africa, Asia and Latin America on how to provide and advocate for safe and legal abortions, and provide women with information so that they can access these services.

Areas of Focus
Ipas continues to focus on the ability for Women and Girls to abort and obtain contraceptive in a legal and safe manner, but in order to get such things legalized and accessible, Ipas will continue train providers, to strengthen healthcare providers, and engage with communities "to reduce barriers to safe abortion like stigma" Some of Ipas' areas of focus include:


 * Reproductive Health Technologies: Ipas was originally founded as an abortion technology organization that focused on manual vacuum aspirator (MVA), which they plan on evolving over time all while making sure qualities health products remain unchanged.


 * Understanding Women's wants and needs: Ipas wants to focus on research targeted at understanding women's wants a needs in regards to their reproductive health.


 * Self- management of medical abortion: Ipas wishes to improve the ability for women to have some control when it comes to abortion; introducing the pill.


 * High-Quality abortion care: There is not a safe indicator for abortion, therefore Ipas continues to work with partners to ensure safe quality abortions


 * Care for Victims of Gender-based Violence: Ipas wishes to improve care of women and girls that experience gender-based violence that end up in unwanted pregnancies.


 * Sexuality Education that includes abortion: Ipas wishes to partner with global, national and local institutions to advocate for education programs that include non-biased information on sexuality health and abortion.

Global Gag Rule
Ipas is working to keep the Global Gag Rule, also known as Mexico City policy, out of third world countries by documenting the suffering it inflicts on women and girls around the world. This ruling makes it difficult for women to get safe and effective abortions in third world countries, sub-Saharan African countries are most effected by this. At the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo former official with Ipas, Barbara Crane, spoke out against this policy,"We need stronger health systems and we need integrated service delivery. One of the problems is that family planning has often been kept separate from the problems is that family planning has often been kept separate from other health service delivery and verticalized, and abortion even more so. How do you break the cycle of unwanted pregnancy and unsafe abortion? You need to help women have access to services... All it [the global gag rule] does is marginalize women who have a clear and desperate need for these services and makes it harder for them to get access and it stigmatizes providers." As of 2019 Ipas has reported that staff in Africa and Asia are reporting back that this policy is having a negative effect on local women to have safe abortions due to lack of information and funding. Other problems in the Global South that have been reported by Ipas as of early 2019 are grantees are uneducated on this ruling and unknowingly accept which hinders their work on abortion, grantees are concluding their support with Ipas due to misunderstanding, and Bangladesh even stopped providing contraceptives which lead to stock-outs in some private facilities.

History
Ipas’s work began in 1973, with the provision of life-saving reproductive health technologies for health systems in several countries. Since then, the organization has experienced significant growth and change, but its singular commitment to expanding women’s and girls’ access to safe, legal abortion has remained constant.

Today Ipas has offices on four continents. To meet the reproductive health needs of women and girls, Ipas focuses on improving health services, increasing access to services, and expanding the sexual and reproductive rights of women and girls. In addition, Ipas trains health workers and conducts research to ensure high-quality, evidence-based care is available.