e-conference

The first international Abortion Research e-conference
8 –9 June 2015

Abortion research is under-funded and under-developed, despite 22 million women and girls undergoing unsafe procedures each year and 47,000 dying as a result.

To help develop the field and allow the broadest possible international participation, we hosted a 2-day online e-conference from Monday 8 to Tuesday 9 June 2015. The e-conference brought together researchers, policy makers and practitioners to examine research evidence and practice knowledge that can support efforts to reduce deaths and illness from unsafe abortion and increase access to safe abortion services.

The e-conference focused on three broad themes: abortion care workforce policy, best practices in advertising the availability of abortion services, and a conceptual framework for understanding women’s trajectories to safe or unsafe abortion.  Participants shared results from their own research and practice, proposed new approaches and methodologies and evaluated old ones in order to stimulate and advance abortion research and practice.

You can read and download transcripts of each discussion here:

The e-conference was hosted by the London School of Economics and provided a closed-access secure discussion space that was moderated by experienced abortion researchers. Some participants have chosen to appear anonymously in the transcript. Others were not in a position to share their comments more widely. Their comments have been removed from the transcripts.

By bringing together practitioners, policy makers and researchers from across the world, the e-conference additionally increased networking and facilitated linkages between these groups, and across disciplines, countries and organisations.